


"Actually, I think he's a policeman, too."

by Galan



Category: Midsomer Murders
Genre: Angst, Drama, F/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-04-09
Updated: 2014-06-27
Packaged: 2017-12-07 23:37:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 33
Words: 98,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/754435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Galan/pseuds/Galan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Have you ever wondered what could have happened between Cully and Troy in the weeks and months after "Death and Dreams"? Keep in mind that, in setting this story in the context of the show's many plots, I have put the episodes in an order that I find useful, rather than as they were broadcast. Certain background details will be pulled and adapted from Caroline Graham's novels.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. OVERTURE: Crashing Into Madness

**Author's Note:**

> I've always thought that a Troy-Cully pairing would be interesting, if for no other reason than to explore Barnaby's certain fit of apoplexy at its revelation. Props to Caroline Graham for such wonderful characters and ITV for making such a wonderful show.

**"Actually, I think he's a policeman, too."**

**OVERTURE**

"Is human love the growth of human will?"  
—Lord Byron

**Crashing Into Madness**

A new dream, but the same dream. Different, but identical. And madness,  _especially_  that. They had come more frequently as of late, frank and intrusive dreams that Troy was unable—unwilling?—to turn away. Those bloody dreams replayed so many memories more happily forgotten than embraced:

reliving their first meeting  _(the introduction from that single mutual acquaintance whose differing stations in their separate lives threw a wrench into everything) (his stupid reach for her shoulder just a moment after first beholding her) (awkwardly jumping up to offer the seats to his left...the offer unseen as they sat beside the man he later learned to be Colin Smy) (a long white dress with a fruit-and-leaf print descending far enough to almost touch her ankles, a tan-camel-_ whatever the hell neutral _it really was blazer on her shoulders, and hair a beautiful mix of gold and red pulled up behind her head)_ ;

that mess with the Brazilian cigarette model  _(another evening at the theater, a much more professional evening than the last he had spent at the Causton Playhouse) (disappointment at her father's absence not disappearing, but quickly diminishing in the wake of his substitute companionship) (drinks on her—a couple glasses of wine each—the alcohol loosening her tongue to stretch beyond the theater and his to respond in kind) (food on him, a quick stop by a café afterward for something between a snack and a meal, time for her to fully elucidate the play and briefly dwell on those previously discussed Not Theater topics) (a self-conscious goodbye as he dropped her at home, certain her father sat beside the light he saw as she opened the front door);_

the new world of possibilities, intensifying beyond his control _(the first call she made to him, afternoon plans in which he was not an emergency substitute for the father whose occupation often cut into the private world, but the desired person) (the not constant but frequent meetings before she disappeared for another role in another play) (a first kiss, shared over a few glasses of wine, happily and anxiously remembered his next working day) (the first time his extraordinary caution wavered...and an unending task list of imagined punishments planted it firmly again) (The Discussion That Had Become An Argument, accusations of cowardice and recklessness, and so much silence in their wake) (missing her, as the possibilities moulded in her absence)_ ;

the evening when, in spite of their separate paths, she had again kissed him  _(_ her  _action,_  her _choice, a long wanted-desired-needed-_ for god's sake I was a drowning man and I can breathe again _-_ everything but demanded  _kiss) (a kiss-moment-evening-future?-_ god only knew what  _ruined by another bloody murder) (and how she quietly, gently pushed him away, did not look at him)_.

Silly and, really, unwanted remembrances Troy refused to push aside completely as he woke, eyes opening to a still dark room. God, she could drive him to the brink, even the form he had just constructed in his dreams. The safest place for her, and the worst. A quick glance at the clock...half two. He groaned, pressing the back of a hand to his eyes and almost begging the phone to ring, for some nasty Midsomer corpse to distract him. But then, how poorly would that distraction fare with her father delivering orders and brusque commands? No better than just hoping for it. Maybe worse.

DCI Barnaby—sir—whatever the occasion demanded—was simultaneously a known and unknown person. He was the familiar man who headed discussions about cases, clues, and conclusions, then the stranger who went home to his own family each evening: the wife and daughter he dearly loved and of whom he was very proud, the family that remained at an arm's length throughout the day and...hell, forever a light-year from Troy! As the man's family should be.

God, hadn't he already learned his lesson? Painful and expensive enough that he should have. Besides, what was the point in pining for the forbidden? True, no words to such effect had ever been stated, though they had been more than implied. Actually speaking them was unnecessary. Cully Barnaby was apart, a woman with whom he had no business speaking, embracing, kissing—even if it was her doing!—and dreaming...

Troy turned to his side, away from the glowing numbers of the clock, ignoring the rustling sheets. God, he was in too deep—the morning would shake him awake too soon—Barnaby would fix him with that sharper stare he'd cultivated since dealing with those bloody murderous children—and nothing would change.

What a mess. He was sinking in quicksand: certain doom if he did nothing, and a swifter fate if he struggled, playing those thoughts again and again to destroy them. A bloody mess.


	2. ACT I: Chapter 1: Backing Up

**ACT I**

"When the mind is in a state of uncertainty, the smallest impulse directs it to either side."  
—Terence

**Chapter 1: Backing Up**

She truly hadn't intended it today. If anything, Cully wanted the opposite. Why? Well, that was plain as could be, obvious even to the densest man. Though maybe not, considering the past few hours. She blamed  _them_ , a quiet collection of memories, some buried deeper than others. But she had never even called the entire affair—no, that was the wrong word, relationship—an error in judgment, at least regarding the man. Poor judgment of the situation, perhaps, the truth of their  _relationship_  as it had stood for the years her father had worked with him, but not the man. It was an impossible situation, and one really best ended and forgotten.

Cully had known most of his faults for years, having heard more than enough from her father over the dinner table. Frustrations as he leapt to an answer without consideration for everything right before his eyes, aggravation for his apparent lack of thought before speaking much of the time, disbelief about the views he occasionally spouted. But never a truly bad word about the man himself. His form, yes, but never his character, his loyalty, what truly mattered.

She closed her book, one finger still between the pages to hold the place. No point in pretending, she wasn't remembering a word after her eyes skimmed over it.  _Maybe_ , Cully thought, rubbing at an eye,  _I shouldn't have said anything at all._

But how? It had been one of those moments that could be neither accepted nor denied, only survived.

* * *

"Gavin!" she called, not quite believing the sight of him, coming the opposite direction on the sidewalk. Almost strange, really, seeing him out of a non-uniformed officer's unofficial-official uniform. In the last few months she'd been out of Midsomer, she had forced the old image of him back into her mind whenever a stray thought wandered back to him: a proper policeman in his basic suit, button-up shirt, and tie.

He looked at her for a moment, eyebrows furrowing a bit before he waved, then walked a bit quicker around a middle-aged woman with her small rolling shopping trolley. It was with a few stuttering steps that he came up to her, glancing at the ground for a moment before speaking. "Uh...hello...Cully."

"And hello to you, too." He had been much like this the last time they had spoken outside of his official capacity as a policeman, dressed rather the same—a dark polo shirt, jeans, tennis shoes—and trying desperately to bury his nerves. "Don't act like you've seen a ghost. It's just me." She was nearly surprised by how he avoided examining her, for she was surely a bit different. Her hair, though still light, was longer, her complexion a bit paler than even before, what with all her days spent inside either rehearsing, performing, or seizing a few hours of miraculous sleep whenever the rare opportunity came about.

He shook his head, a bit too quickly. "No, no, just—haven't seen you around, that's all," he said, almost stopping in the middle. His hands were in his back pockets, his gaze dancing around, falling everywhere but on her.

Cully could only smile a bit. This was the way she remembered him when they first met, that disastrous evening at the Causton Playhouse: like he wasn't sure what to make of her, how to regard her, where to categorize her in his world. "Well, it's hardly a way to greet a friend, then," she said.

"Right," he said, removing a hand from a pocket just long enough to scratch at his nose.  _Might as well help him,_  she thought. Before he had a chance to move, she ran an arm around his back, just a brief hug like she offered any old friend, and surely she could still call him that. He was tense for a moment and even after he returned the embrace, though he broke out of it quicker than she expected.

Silence, again.  _How easy does he think this is for me?_  she wondered, stepping back and trying to gather her next thought, waiting for him to say anything. But still, only the noise of the street was between them. "Been out of town for a couple of months," she finally said, "that's all. I just finished a production."

"Oh, right." He still turned his face anywhere else, as though he was worried about simply looking her in the eye. "What of?" he asked at last, and she heard the vagueness of the words, just noise to fill empty space.

"Shakespeare.  _Hamlet_ , actually," she said, shifting to one foot. His nerves were bleeding over to her, and she fought her eyes, demanding them to be still and look straight forward for the moment when he finally mustered his own courage. "One of those modern interpretations you either love or hate, nothing in between. Didn't Dad tell you?"

"No," he said with another brief scratch at his face, "must have slipped his mind."

Cully felt her own stomach begin to turn, his unease now completely contagious. "Too many gristly murders in there instead?" she managed. A good topic, she decided, something safe.

"A few." He finally smiled, the same sort her father had worn as long as she could remember, a quiet expression to shove it all aside. A shrug of the shoulders, then. "Rather more than a few, I guess."

"Wouldn't be Midsomer without them, would it?"

"Hardly." The smile faded as he was silent again, the pause running a bit too long. He stepped to one side, clearing a path with a vague wave of a hand. Cully took the offer without a word, setting a slow tempo, and he fell in beside her, clearing his throat. "Just running around this afternoon?"

She crossed her arms over her stomach as she walked, a few twitching fingers digging into her elbows. "Mostly. I just came from the library."

"Find something interesting to read?" Again, bland, empty. She glanced at him—and he immediately looked down, like he was concerned about some invisible obstacle in the pavement. His hair was a bit longer than when she had last seen him, in need of a trim, but not quite long enough for the gentle curls at the front she remembered from the first sight of him.

"I did take something out, but I was there...professionally, I guess." Cully let out a quiet chuckle. "I'm going to be working on their mobile unit again, while I'm resting."

"You still enjoy risking literary disaster during a quick right turn, eh?"

"Most of us don't make driving quite as much an adventure as you, Gavin." She had experienced it more than once and heard it harangued  _in absentia_  with more than a few grumbling words.

"He keeps dropping hints," he said, at last removing his hands from his pockets, "I think he wants me to take the driving course again."

"I think he wants to make it home each night in one piece." His laugh was short, but easier, more comfortable than anything he had said. "I think he likes seeing Mum and me every evening." Already, Cully wanted those words back, not for what they meant but the words themselves. She knew what lay beneath Gavin's nerves, and it was no surprise. He didn't really believe her that blind, did he?

"I guess." The words were soft, but somehow stronger than his greeting. "Do you...want to grab a coffee, maybe?" He was silent again, and she heard him draw a deeper breath. "I'd like to hear about what makes a  _willing_  theater-goer hate Shakespeare."

Cully pulled her arms apart, slapping his elbow lightly with a hand. "Spoken like a true theater buff."

"Only where Pinter's concerned." She hardly thought about it—and he did not shrink from the touch—as she threaded her arm around his. All she knew was the smile she at last heard in his voice.

* * *

It had been a pleasant afternoon shared over a pair of coffees apiece, just a couple of hours to relive the past months. Cully had no illusions as to Gavin's appreciation of theater, her assumption proved particularly correct in his attitude to Shakespeare. He had laughed—really laughed—when she suggested  _The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged)_  to cultivate a liking for the Bard, with its American football rendition of the histories and forty-three second long enactment of  _Hamlet_. His brief review of the recent Midsomer crimes was cautious, circumventing the nastier details, but still more in depth than she was accustomed to hearing from her father. No matter her age, she remained his only child and daughter, territory that merited a permanent shield from the truly sordid nature of his work.

In the midst of Gavin's first coffee, he seemed to finally forget their immediate past completely, to jump into the present wholeheartedly. Old moments had invaded occasionally until then, but now they disappeared. All through the rest of the afternoon, he was the man she remembered, tripping himself up as he spoke before thinking and not entirely afraid of his own faults, either, though he seemed not to regard them all as such. Yet as they stood to leave, that old Gavin Troy vanished, replaced by the nervous, awkward doppelgänger who had met her on the sidewalk. He stiffened as she offered a final hug, shied away from her typical goodbye kiss on the cheek. And with just a quick farewell, he walked away, something between a normal pace and a jog with one final look and wave to her, and then he was gone around the corner. Like that was that.

Yet it wasn't, it  _couldn't_  be. Too much lay in the silence of the past months. It was nothing to do with that short period when she had allowed herself to think of him as something more than he had always been: her father's partner at work, another policeman. No, that time was long gone, the argument and final moment long since finished, resolved. After all, they had met and spoken without this...coldness in that year, when the normal order of things and relationships had returned. He had again been merely Detective Sergeant Troy, with only some memories to differentiate him from any other person with whom her father ever worked. But she knew: the end of the interval,  _that_  was what lay behind Gavin's demeanor, the cautious words, the unwanted common courtesies.

At last, she set the book aside, not caring about the lost page. It had all vanished anyway, the names, the first twists and turns of the plot. Slumping back in the armchair, Cully closed her eyes as she craned her face to the ceiling. The house was quiet, now, her parents on a long walk, and the emptiness suffocated her.

She was to blame, wasn't she?

Yes, she had kissed him that night, and Cully wouldn't claim it had been otherwise. Her choice, not his, at least not at first. She had tasted the wine on his breath, but couldn't bring herself to care, for this was her...test, almost. More than a year lay between them and that disastrous last night, when his fear overwhelmed anything he felt and her anger sent her off to another role in another play as quickly as she had a chance. She had kissed him again, those few months ago, and in a moment, he had kissed her back. And it was not a chaste return, or even a response in kind. It had been more,  _far_  more that she did not run from, and it had not frightened her or even stoked any worry. The fear was of...herself. Oh, it was so quickly—rightly—shoved aside by another addition to the case of three teenage homicidal maniacs, but...Once the terror seeped away,  _fear_  remained of herself and  _might_ ,  _maybe_ ,  _what if_ , all those bloody words.

It was a reasonable fear, too: of what had so quickly risen again, of the past-present-future, everything. He had passed, and Cully would have apologized, except...she had failed. In the first second, _"I'm sorry"_  had been prepared, waiting to be born in her throat, but it was suddenly unnecessary as more unexpected—not  _unwanted_ —seconds came into being. So many weeks and months, more than a year, they all ceased to be, like they had never  _been_  at all, like she had not stormed away from him late that night.

And then to run away from him again, to want to  _forget_  him again, that demanded the apology still at hand. "Maybe I should wait," she said, whispering even in the empty house. Too loud.  _I might need to apologize again._


	3. Chapter 2: Evasive Maneuvers

**Chapter 2: Evasive Maneuvers**

The first taste of tea in the morning was always the best, the sudden rush of pleasant bitterness and sugar. And certainly better than the coffee the station had on offer; that swill had no savior, no matter the amount of milk and sugar. Troy was still spinning the spoon in the cup as he walked into the office he shared with the chief inspector who was already sitting at his desk, looking over a stack of papers.

"Good morning, Troy," Barnaby said, not looking up from the page. He, too, had a mug at his side, though coffee or tea, Troy didn't know.

"Morning, sir." The man didn't answer, but shifted the pages, now glancing to the second.  _Well, at least he's thinking about something else,_  Troy thought. Yesterday evening was still on his mind, though...Really, what was there to worry about? After all, it was just conversation, a couple of hours over coffee with a friend. "The vicar finally turned up yesterday," he said after a moment, now sipping a bit more of his sugary tea.

"Did he?" The words were vacant, almost distracted as Barnaby's eyes followed the text on the page through the glasses he sometimes wore.

"Yes," Troy said, tapping his fingers on the mug as he went to his own desk, a cluttered mess of forms beside his phone, dropped by someone earlier in the morning. Without a thought, he reached out and straightened them, squaring off and aligning each edge.

"You weren't really worried, were you?" Something swirled beneath the words, the slightly mocking tone his superior sometimes used in response to his observations.

Troy scowled, hiding the expression behind another mouthful of tea. "Can't know anymore, can you? In Midsomer? The way she kept going on about adultery?"

_She was settled in at the small table on the patio as he walked around the corner, reading, no doubt something out of the Bible. "Mrs. Millard?"_

_The vicar's wife looked up, as did the black labrador by her feet. And she even smiled a bit. "Sergeant Troy." The woman had often had a serious air about her—though Barnaby had certainly experienced more of it, to Troy's relief—but she seemed at ease, now._

_The dog was on its feet, sniffing at his hand, and Troy scratched its ears before it licked his palm. "Chief Inspector Barnaby thought we ought to let you know we shan't be needing your—kitchen utensils any longer."_

_The smile faded as Mrs. Millard sighed. "Poor Hillary."_

_"Yes," Troy said, standing straight and letting the dog alone as his own smile disappeared. Well, the entire thing had been a bloody mess, welcoming back a daughter only to point to her for blackmail. How anyone outside of Causton made an honest living was beyond him; they seemed few and far between._

_"And poor Jane Bennett," the vicar's wife continued, closing her Bible, folding her hand around the edge. "It's most...troubling to one's conscience that some crimes seem entirely justified." She stopped for a moment, still caressing the book. "Jane's is one of them."_

_Troy's fingers were almost twitching, and he couldn't help but stare. The bags of cement, the wheelbarrow, the shovels, the spare slabs..._ No.  _The stones were familiar—from the Memorial Garden—and the entire thing must be new, what with Cynthia Bennett's body just out of her hidden grave. And,_ _he still had yet to meet the vicar._  No.

_"As I told Mr. Barnaby, adultery is one of the most despicable of all human activities." The way she held that book—possessively, protectively—it set him ill at ease._

_Troy looked over his shoulder at the remnants of the patio's construction, suddenly unable to meet her eyes. "Nice patio," he managed, unable to hide entirely the note of apprehension, especially as she appeared startled by the comment. "New?"_

_"Very," the vicar's wife said, smiling again as she surveyed a bit of it happily. Almost...proudly. "I find hard work an aid to prayer. And there has been so much to pray about recently."_

Bloody hell,  _he thought. "And...ah..." Troy didn't know why he was glancing around, as though he might find a forgotten bit of the man's leg poking out of a flower bed. "Still...no vicar?"_

_"Good evening." The voice was bright as the vicar emerged from the house in a typical old man's sweater, carrying a tea pot and tea cups on a small tray, like he had not a care in the world._

_Troy sighed, almost letting out a breath he hadn't noticed he was holding, smiling again as Mrs. Millard stood. "Arthur, this is Sergeant Troy."_

_The vicar offered a handshake, and Troy was almost shocked to discover the man was flesh and bone, rather than a hallucination. "How do you do?"_

_"Hello," he said, unsurprised by the relief in his own voice._

_"Oh, would you care to join us for tea..." Mrs. Millard said, suddenly eager, peering up at him, "and an ecumenical debrief?"_

_"Uh, no, thank you," Troy said, almost falling over the words. Until her last comment, he might have said yes, but not now. "It's a relief—"_  No, don't say it!  _"I mean, a pleasure, to meet you, Vicar..." He took a step backwards. "I best be off."_

The chief inspector stood, walking to the filing cabinet behind his desk. Metal shrieked as he tugged open the second drawer, pulling out one of the ubiquitous files. "Maybe, but it's hardly something to accuse a  _vicar_  of."

"Well, sir, after that bloke at Badger's Drift*..." Troy shrugged before he scratched at his neck, just around his shirt collar.

"Stephen?" Barnaby said, his voice still sounding like he was miles away, resting the manila folder on the drawer as he opened it, shuffling through the pages.

"Yes." Troy drained the last bit of tea, the warmth filling the empty space in his stomach that he had some mornings if time had not allowed a visit to the canteen. Like today. "Can't really be helped, can it, sir?"

Barnaby laughed quietly, closing the folder and tossing it to his desk, then slamming the drawer with another squeal that made Troy shiver. "Only if you always believe the worst about vicars."

"They make it easy," Troy muttered. The harsh, metallic sound still echoed in his ears as he finally sat, his desk opposite the chief inspector's. Sliding his mug away, Troy picked up the first paper from the pile. "Ran into Cully last night, sir, after I'd been to the vicarage."

"Oh?" Barnaby said, finally looking up, still peering through his reading glasses. "She didn't mention it."

_Dammit._  He reached for his collection of pens, scattering them a bit as he took one, for once glad of the noise and not caring about the disarray. "She was on her way back from the library."  _You're making too much of it_.

"Yes, she's volunteering for them again."

"I still think she's a bit mad," Troy said, filling in the first empty line, "driving that mobile unit all over Midsomer." His fingertips were white, gripping the bottom of the pen a bit too tightly.

"Most of us don't choose to make near as much an adventure of driving as you, Troy," Barnaby said, leaning back in his chair. "I thought she was a bit late getting back." The last sentence was quieter, like a thought he had not meant to speak aloud.

Troy dug the tip of the pen deeper into the paper, almost tearing through it with the pressure. "We just"—he paused, trying to think—"caught up, sir, about the past few months. That's all." The last words had rushed out of his mouth far too quickly, too nervously.

"Indeed."

Troy loathed these moments, when the chief inspector used fewer rather than more words. What might have otherwise been spread through a sentence had to be endured in a syllable or two.

"Didn't know she'd been doing another play," Troy went on, words forming before thoughts. Moving his pen to the next line—and he would not be so violent on the paper, here—he sighed, shifting a bit uncomfortably in his chair. But surely this was a neutral topic...

"That is what she does... _acting_ , Troy."

Or not.

"Yes, sir." The shrill tone of the phone was a grating relief, a temporary reprieve to what was beginning to feel like an interrogation.  _Keep your head on, they're only questions!_

"DCI Barnaby." It was a moment to breathe again, Troy felt, Barnaby safely occupied with the words at the other end of the line. "Ah, thank you," he said, clapping the receiver back on the machine as he stood, already pulling on his coat. "And so, Troy, one case closes, another begins."

He felt the confusion on his face, scrambling to his feet and tossing the pen back to the pile without capping it again; he would deal with it later. "Another murder, sir?" Just a bit of relief as well. Funny, really,  _murder_  as a safer subject to discuss!

The chief inspector hardly waited for him to follow, and Troy took a few quicker steps to catch him as he walked down the hall. "No, for once."

"In Midsomer? Strange indeed."

"Just an incinerated car of sorts." Barnaby spoke quickly, offering the few details he had received as they exited the building: a destroyed car sitting in a stockbroker's drive in Midsomer Market, set afire in the middle of the night, just as the man had himself buckled in to drive to Causton for a check on the panicked New York market. Troy had the keys in his hand to open the driver's door when Barnaby said, "What did you talk about?"

"Sorry, sir?" Troy asked, his hand pausing on the handle.

"You and Cully."

"Ah..." His mouth was dry as he opened the door. "Nothing much, sir. Like I said, just...what's been happening the past few months. Nothing important."

"Hmm." The response was vague as both sat, fixing their seat belts before the engine woke with a grumble. "Do try to get us there in one piece, Troy. I, too, would like to see my daughter this evening."

With a laugh, Troy threw the car into gear. "Yes, sir." The moment of levity evaporated and he clenched the steering wheel tighter as he pressed his foot on the accelerator. From anyone else, he might know it to be just a comment, but not Barnaby; the man could lay traps left and right. If he had, Troy felt the teeth snapping around his ankle.

* * *

* "Death's Shadow", S02E01


	4. Chapter 3: Proceeding With Caution

**Chapter 3: Proceeding With Caution**

Some time passed between decision and action, between certainty and movement. That she would call him was without question, yet a quarter of an hour went by as she sat beside the phone, thinking. More than once she picked up the receiver—and once she began to dial—before dropping it back again, maintaining the status quo. More time to rehearse her lines, as it were. She was confident once she had pressed on past the electronic squeal of each digit in her ears, the nervousness would fade, but to get to it...Well, that was the trouble, wasn't it?

Cully had passed the day driving the mobile unit, awash in the interest of children in one book or another, an elderly woman here selecting a mystery she had already read a dozen times, a middle-aged man there choosing a spy thriller. It pushed away all the other thoughts that might have intruded, the meeting and conversation that had veered hither and yonder in her skull, that night and yesterday.

"Oh, really," she muttered, slamming the plastic handset down again.  _This is ridiculous._  A second later, she lifted it again, punching in the numbers with a savage ferocity, gripping the receiver rather more firmly than needed. The ringing was not nearly so bad, just as she had anticipated, but wasn't that the way it always was?

The answer was quick and practiced, very precise. "Troy."

She found a deep, quiet breath before she spoke. "Hello, Gavin?"

The background noise crept in for a moment, a cluster of innumerable indistinct voices, bits of rustling plastic, muffled footsteps. "Ah, yes, hello," he said after a moment, quieter than before. It was the same, nearly anxious voice that had disappeared for a time when she had last spoken with him.

"Is everything all right?" she asked, not really noticing as she pulled her legs up onto the chair.

"Uh, yes, fine, it's just—not the best time." Wherever Midsomer's crime had called him, he surely had enough to hold his attention without an interruption from her.

"I can hear that," Cully said, wondering not for the first time what her father was doing in the course of his day (questioning a suspect, reading a report, walking around bloodstains again and again?). "I—I'm sorry—"

"No, no," he answered quickly. "Can I call you back in a bit?"

"Oh, don't worry about it." She did not speak for a moment, twisting her nose and curling her body tighter, further back in the chair. "Do—you think you will be free to talk sometime, maybe this evening?"

Again, it was just the noise around him for a moment, like he had seized silence to think instead. "Um, yes," he said, the words clear but cautious.

"Troy!" The shouted demand was clear, the voice her father's, though still far from loud in her ear. Cully nearly saw Gavin turning to the voice, maybe waving a hand as if to say  _One minute_.

"Sorry," he said, "he just arrived, here at the crime scene."

"How is seven?" Cully said quickly. Everything else could wait until then. "Same place, for tea?"

"Whatever you say." The words were rushed, and she wondered if he was nodding. "I'll see you then."

"Yes. Goodbye."

"Goodbye." He ended the call so swiftly, Cully might have felt hurt as she replaced the receiver on the end table, but for knowing how a police officer's work demanded attention  _here_  and  _now_ , not  _there_  and  _soon_. All her life, she had watched it happen.

Unwinding her body, she slid to the edge of the chair, letting go of another breath. It had to be done, surely, should have been done  _weeks_  ago. Would have been, if she had not been off as soon as an opportunity had appeared. Sometimes, Cully still did not believe she had; she wasn't one to run away from anything in life, and yet...

A few more hours would make no difference, now, to herself or Gavin. They would have been meaningless then as well. And to talk it out over a cup of tea rather than a glass of wine as might have happened that night—after all, who knew what other futures had existed before she had scrambled up that rope netting and her heart had fairly stopped as she saw the poor man, drowned and hanged for a crime that existed only in the minds of three adolescents.

_No._  Cully shook her head as she stood, stretching her arms behind her neck.  _Just a friend and a cup of tea. That's all it should be._

* * *

She had paced up and down the sidewalk just outside the tea shop several times, one hand tucked in the back pocket of her jeans. More than once, she had gritted her teeth at the urge to look at her watch. Surely it was just gone seven, and Gavin still had a few minutes, thanks to the varying range of minute hands. Perhaps something new had arisen in whatever it was they were investigating; her father had said nothing about it the night before—

No, she finally saw him at the end of the street, his working day clearly concluded. Again, no one passing him would ever believe him a detective: he had traded his suit coat and tie for another polo and a light jacket, trousers for jeans. Cully waved as he neared and at that distance, she still saw him smile, though it quickly faded. She had always found him to have an expressive face.

"Hello," she said as he reached her.

"Hi—Cully." Even through those two words, she heard a bit of strain: less than those couple of days earlier, but more than when she had first met him, when she noticed none. She only offered her own smile in return, this time. Was it too much to hope for that he was not examining it? Every further second she wore it, the more forced it felt. "Well," he said after a moment, stepping away from the door for her, "shall we?"

It was a few minutes to collect her thoughts, her breath, the learned calm she found before every show, as they ordered their tea. This time of the day, rather like before, the shop was half full: too late for escapees from the world of offices and too early for theater-goers dropping in after a show.

"You'll break your teeth on that," she said as Gavin poured a generous helping of sugar into his cup.

"My get up and go every morning," he said, stirring it briefly.

"But it's not morning."

"Why fuss with it, if it works. Um, well"—he looked out into the mess of tables—"where would you like?"

"How about that one?" She pointed to one beside the window onto the street, the sunlight still overwhelming the interior electric lights. He nodded, following her.

Cully was silent as they sat, twisting her cup on its saucer, not yet ready to speak her mind as the tea rippled. "Sorry to have caught you in the middle of the day. I thought you might be almost through by then," she said finally.

"Not at all. It was almost done." A dark look flickered on his face, gone nearly as soon as it appeared. "It could have been worse, I could have answered when your—" He stopped, glancing away. She knew the rest of the sentence, or at least a version.  _I could have answered when your father was in the room._  "We worked separately, part of the afternoon. Not that it did much good for me, he had me looking for papers that weren't there, in the end. He at least managed something, came back with a bunch of those plastic letters kids have to play with. If you call that  _something_."

"If you don't know what you're looking for, exactly, you can't really help it." He still didn't say anything, and Cully felt the annoyance beneath the silence. "But," she said after a moment, "how is the case going? Really going, aside from your afternoon." A safe topic in safe territory, away from thoughts about her father.

He laughed quickly, but without humor. "Well, forget yesterday's simple car problem."

"Stolen?" She took a first mouthful of tea, the hot liquid settling a bit unhappily at first in her empty stomach, but quieting in a moment.

"No," he said, shaking his head as he tasted his tea as well, "set on fire. But that would have been a bit too easy, wouldn't it? Or a bit too nice."

"What is it now?" Cully leaned forward a bit, both curious and willing to delay the inevitable.

"An old lady beaten to death with her own walking stick, and not even the owner of the car." He sat back heavily against the chair, like he was reviewing the day's events, what was worth discussing and what was best left unsaid. "Sometime late last night, few minutes after eleven if her watch is anything to believe—smashed in the attack. One of those people that can really get your back up, evidently."

"Not a nice woman, was she?" Gavin's manner was different today, that much Cully saw easily. Or rather, it had changed quicker. The nerves she had noticed in his voice when they had spoken over the phone had vanished almost immediately, and now one might never know that they were anything but old friends— The thoughts crept in again, and Cully shoved them aside as she tucked a lock of hair behind her right ear. They could wait, she knew.

He took another sip of tea, finally appearing to have decided on what was safe to be risked as common knowledge. "Well...More that—she was blunt, sometimes, or at least that's what her friends would have us believe. And good at secrets." Shifting forward, forearms on the table's edge, he smiled again. "Have a guess: what would a reading club be doing when they meet for tea?"

Narrowing her eyes for a moment, Cully said, "Discussing a book. What else?"

Again, he shook his head. "See, too easy. She headed the Midsomer Market Reading Club, and turns out that was just a front. The ladies of the Reading Club were actually investing in the stock market."

"So is that why Dad was reading  _Investment Daily_?" It had been a laugh, her father hidden behind that reddish paper, grumbling. "He spent a while complaining it was incomprehensible."

"Don't know, really, he took it off me yesterday."

Cully pursed her lips, certain her disbelief was already too obvious to bother hiding it behind her cup. " _You_? I wouldn't have thought you'd be interested in the stock market, either."

"Bit of a story." His cheeks flushed, just visible in the evening light, and he distracted himself with a large swig of tea. "Managed to put my foot in it today."

"You don't have to explain if you don't want to, Gavin," Cully laughed. She straightened her face, too serious to be believed as she leaned further over the table, feeling almost humorously conspiratorial. "But what other misstep did you have today, then?"

"Well," he began, "you'd hardly expect the actual lord of the manor to be up on a ladder, trying to do some good for ancient wallpaper. Or his wife to be wandering around on a roof that's seen its day, like there's nothing to it." He was paler now, pressing his fingers to the table like he was trying to clutch it. "Lord and Lady Chetwood, and that house is in a right state, Cully. At least he took it good humor I guess."

"You can't ask for more than that, can you?"

"A warning about the roof would have been nice. Not my favorite place to visit today...or any day." The color had not returned to his cheeks, and he suddenly drained the last of his tea. "If we were meant to walk on roofs, they'd all have railings around the edges."

"Not a fan of heights, are you?"

"Not really," he said, nearly shuddering. "Never have been."

"Are they suspects?" Cully asked, her curiosity genuine. Though she knew the more gristly details had been omitted, particularly when she was young, she had heard the tales of her father's cases—discussions of culprits included—her entire life.

"Who?"

"Lord and Lady Chetwood."

"I suppose." He was quiet, once more considering what to say. "Lady Chetwood was a member of the Reading Club—her plan to find money to fix the roof, she said. The number of pots and pans they have to collect the leaks, Cully, it's a hazard. And he's a bit barmy," he added with a bit of a grin. "Harmless, probably, but barmy."

Neither spoke, now, the topic all but exhausted. There was no way around it, Cully knew, and it was probably best to treat it like a plaster: just do it, get it over with, refuse to drag it out..."Do you fancy another cup of tea, Gavin?" she said.  _So much for that._

He looked at the empty cup, like he had forgotten it was empty. "Oh, no." And now, he set his elbows on the table's edge, crossing his arms as he looked down to examine an imaginary knot in the wood. "Cully, what did you want to talk about?" He caught her gaze, now. "I mean— _really_  talk about?"

"What?" It was all she could think to say—feigned surprise, but he was hardly a novice at dissecting misleading words and half-truths.

"You could have had all this—and more—from your father, if you were just curious."

"Spot on," she said, the practiced calm of the theater failing to unknot a sudden tightness in her chest. The cup clinked as she ran her finger around the saucer's edge, fiddling mindlessly.

"So what is it, then?" he asked, quieter, more cautious.

"I want—" That wasn't right, Cully knew. "No, Gavin, I need to talk to you about—that evening. After the party."

She saw him tense, his posture tighter. "What about it?" he said after a moment, that same unpleasant voice. Not anxious, but...well, she couldn't quite decide what to call it.

_Be careful_ , she thought. "I—I should have told you before." She had to pause, to think again; these were not the words to be said carelessly. "Because I'm sorry, Gavin, I really am."


	5. Chapter 4: Reflections

**Chapter 4: Reflections**

His shoulders tightening again, Troy sat up straight, though his arms remained on the table. "About—what?"

She shook her head, her face truly serious now as she frowned. "Gavin, don't pretend—"

"Cully, I know what you mean, but— _why_." His jacket rustled as he shrank further into the chair. He already knew the words were ill advised, but they still tumbled out. "It's not as though I didn't enjoy it—"

"I never doubted that for a minute, not even then." She managed to smile now, and it chased away a bit of the embarrassment he felt on his cheeks even as it disappeared so quickly. "That's not the point."

"Then what is?"

"What it was, in my own mind...It was a disaster, the two of us, a while ago..." She drifted into silence, tapping her fingers as if debating what to say next. "And for my own—peace of mind, I guess, I wanted to see what those—problems meant, now. Or then, I guess." Quiet again, she crossed her arms against her body, almost protectively. "Call it what you will, but I felt I was in the right, wanting to know."

Troy wasn't certain what to call the tightness in his chest: annoyance, frustration, anger...Whatever it was, he knew it was obvious to her as well. "So what was it, some sort of bloody audition?" he asked, hearing that same emotion in his words. One of his legs was jumping, smacking the heel of his shoe on the tiled floor. "A test?"

"If you want to, call it that."

"I'd call it an unfair one."

She turned away for a moment, and when she looked back, Troy knew she was seething. Her fair skin was slightly flushed and her blue-gray eyes were narrowed, whatever prompted that brief grin long forgotten. "Like what you did to me before was  _fair_?"

"Cully—"

"You were afraid, Gavin, and you put that before me!" She stopped, taking a breath before she went on, softer, "Before both of us."

The words cut through his own anger—he had decided to call it that—because wasn't she right? He was still, finally, the anger ebbing away, transforming into something else. "So, what, I should have just forgotten everything else?" Troy asked. Bloody hell, did she  _want_  him to feel this guilty? Yes,  _guilt_. He had excoriated himself over it long ago and here it was again, like she believed he had never thought about it.

"I didn't—"

"If you could have seen any way around it, I would have been be happy to hear it." That was the truth of it: neither of them could escape how the world had brought them together, and the same catalyst had sent them on separate paths. "Because I couldn't."

"Then what was the point of it?" she asked. The brief fury was gone, replaced with a bit of sadness as she looked away again, leaning against the table's edge. "It was never going to change, so why bother at all?"

Hell and wrath and a scorned woman...If they were right, Troy was happy just to be quickly raged at. But the silence was almost worse as he scraped his chair on the floor, pushing away from the table. He needed the space, more room to breathe.

"I'm sorry," she said, "I shouldn't..." She sighed, pressing a hand against her cheek, like she needed to support herself. "But...I have to talk to you, about that night. It wasn't—right, doing that to you, and then leaving without any explanation." Now, she brushed the same hand through her hair—was it longer?—before dropping it to her lap. "It was just...afterward, then Dad being attacked...I shouldn't have left like I did, but I couldn't stay." She met his gaze again but her eyes were empty and her face was paler, as though she was in the sitting room again, watching the blue-black bruise darken around the base of her father's throat. "When you brought him back to the house, I don't think I've ever been more frightened in my life."

"You'd be mad, otherwise." It was terrifying enough for him, seeing Barnaby collapsed to his knees in the grass, desperate for air. But when he had driven the man home and seen their faces, the utter fear and sadness and relief just deepened the ache. He had never known Cully to cry. To be upset and frightened, yes, but never to  _cry_ ; the sight only hardened the determination to solve the damn thing.

"And when the audition came up," she continued, her mind finally back in the tea shop, "it seemed that if I didn't know to when to worry, maybe I wouldn't. If I stayed busy enough, I wouldn't think about it."

"Cully..." Troy stopped, leaning in closer to her again.  _Shut up_ , he hissed to himself,  _don't you be a bloody fool, now._

She bit her lip. "But, no matter how busy I was with rehearsals and performances..."

He knew what she wasn't saying. "Well, did it  _help_?" he asked softly.

She nodded after a moment. "Yes. By opening night, at least, I knew how to ignore it." Her fingers were drumming on the table again, shoving the remembered fear aside. "He always kept that part of his work separate. I mean, I've known it's unavoidable—"

Troy shrugged a bit, and wished he hadn't. What would she think, that he was dismissing her worry? "It goes with the job," he said. He had learned to ignore it; he had to, or it would overwhelm him.

"But that was the first time I really saw it, Gavin, what could happen. It's not that he hadn't been hurt before—knocked about, things like that—but  _that_...I'm sorry," she said, rubbing at one eye. "I didn't mean—" She stopped, drawing a deep breath; her face was calmer and a touch of the color returned to her skin, but both her eyes were tinged red. "That wasn't what I wanted to talk about."

"No, don't worry about it." Troy swallowed, finally noticing how dry his mouth had become. Now he  _did_  fancy another cup of tea, when it was certainly out of the question.

"While I was gone, though, I realized something," she said, her mouth twitching like she was considering whether to continue.

"What?" Whatever the answer,  _not_  knowing was probably worse.

"I—I missed you, Gavin, more than I thought I would."

It was suddenly quiet despite the growing bustle around them, a few more sets of friends drifting in, filling empty tables, laughing, talking, whispering. But it was silence in the cacophony of voices, a hollow, deadened pressure in his ears. The sun burned his eyes as it waned, nearer and nearer to its daily death, but he would not move an inch, now. A sharp ache—almost a pain—seared his chest, not felt but endured.  _What a mess,_  he thought. How many times had he said that to himself, and now she only buried him again. That torrent of emotions, she had dragged them all out from behind the wall.

"I didn't think it would end like...but I  _had_  to know. I had to settle the question, for myself."

Pressing a hand under his chin for a moment—his entire face was suddenly cold—Troy sighed. The same bloody mess. "You could have just  _asked_."

"I wasn't thinking."

A few minutes ago, she would have snapped at him, but now it was just spoken, something hiding in the words that he could not identify, and he could not resist a smile. The memory bubbled up into the front of his mind: warmth, insanity, desire, and more. "I knew that." At that, she too smiled a bit, almost mischievous. "Well, was it? Your question?"

And again, the same expression, consideration. "Yes. Or at least half of it was. Your half," she said, twisting her fingers round one another. "I'm not certain it helped me any."

Troy had never doubted his side was left a mystery, though he didn't know what he had expected—perhaps even wanted—from her. "What—would have happened, then, if we hadn't found the body?" No, it was the wrong thing to ask, or at least those were the wrong words. What might have been  _then_  was unimportant, almost trivial. "I mean, now?"

Another deep breath. "I don't know, Gavin. I think, no, I  _know_  I wouldn't have rushed off, though." She was looking around again, searching for time to think. "Finding him like that, I could see—the way things really were, not the way I wanted them to be. I guess—how things were supposed to be." With a shrug, she met his eyes; he recognized the guilt. "Now I guess  _you_  can be angry. I did the same as you, thinking about—everything else, rather than you."

The silence prickled the back of his neck, worse than her anger before. "You said it was answered," Troy said, shifting awkwardly in his chair. "So what was my mark on your little test: pass or fail?"

Tossing a bit of hair behind an ear, she said, "Do I really need to tell you?"

"No, you don't. But why are you telling me about it at all? You didn't have to tell me anything. You don't—have to be here, Cully. Why  _are_  you?" She didn't answer.

When they first sat, he would have thought better of it, discarded the idea after brief consideration, but Troy reached across the table, just touching her hand. The skin was soft and smooth, warm.  _To hell with it,_  he thought. If she drew hers away or flinched or frowned, he would pretend it never happened, call it a mistake or an error in judgment.

She didn't move, didn't speak, didn't react.

"It's fine," he added, wishing once more for something better to say, covering her hand entirely. It would have to be enough.

With another sigh, almost resigned, she said, "I couldn't stand not knowing, Gavin." And now she shifted her hand beneath his, turning the palm up, pressing it against his. "Or not being honest with you."

The air was too heavy, thick and syrupy, too much to bear any longer. "Well, I can tell you what would have come of it, if we're being honest." The vice in his chest loosened slightly. "He'd have broken my neck."

The unhappy expression broke when she laughed, the first moment of levity in an eternity. "Would it really have been as bad as that?"

"Probably." Simply breathing was less of a challenge. "As it was, I only got more than my share of the worst parts of the job."

She laughed again, even smiled—and both were a relief. "Well, I'm happy to hear you put up with it."

"I couldn't complain too much, could I?" Her cheeks flushed quickly, though it vanished almost before he noticed. "It still wasn't as bad with the worst job you ever stuck me with."

Her forehead wrinkled in confusion. "What?"

"Keeping your dad on that crazy diet? Don't think I've ever seen him so grumpy. And he's had some foul moods."

She moved her hand at last, slapping his lightly before crossing her arms behind her empty tea cup. "Well, I trust you feel you've been compensated."

"Oh no, no complaints."

It was so much easier, now, finding words. They drifted here and there, finally speaking about nothing of importance: the simple things friends discussed without a care. Her fellow performers in the modernized  _Hamlet_ ; the other men on the new cricket team he had joined; a terse discussion of the prime minister...The entire evening prior to it hardly existed. Or at least they talked around it.

He did not want to ask, and perhaps it was better that way; it really was too much to hope for. Twice already they had ignored the sensible path of mere friendship, and twice it had fallen apart, the center of that maddening, wonderful storm collapsing under the weight of the real world, unable to hold together. If Cully preferred to avoid it all again, it was a nod to sanity. But the possibility was like an itch in his mind, demanding the salve of improbable dreams. Not from where they had last parted—that was ludicrous—but must it be from the beginning, from scratch? It was hardly worth the worry yet.

The sun had nearly vanished and the tea shop had almost emptied when they stood, every topic at hand discussed and exhausted. The late evening air was cool when they stepped outside, crisp and fresh and new. Her face was clear, like the worst part of those hours had disappeared from her mind to leave the peace of the end.

"Well, I'll see you around," she said, crossing her arms. He heard truth in her words, not just a meaningless pleasantry.

"Are you busy on Saturday, Cully?" Troy spoke before he thought better of it, but wasn't that fine? Surely one didn't have to debate every word and syllable in talking to a friend?

"I've got nothing planned," she said, turning her cheek away from a sudden breeze. "Why?"

"I was hoping—" He stopped, some part of his mind still demanding caution.  _No._  Hopes and dreams had no time for caution. "There's a cricket match on Saturday."

"Is your side playing?"

"Yes." Troy nodded. "I was just wondering if you'd be interested in coming?"

She lifted her shoulders, bracing herself against the wind. "You'd like someone there to cheer you on?"

"I'd rather it be you than my cousin and his ghastly wife." God, he hated to think about that pair, let alon _e see_  them.

Her face was pretty as ever, almost radiant in the dusk. It always had been, even the first moment they had met. "I'd love to. When is it?"

Troy almost shook his head, pulling back from the memory. Here and now, that was important, not what had gone before. "It starts at one, just on the town pitch."

"I'll be there." She had a final smile before she kissed his cheek—he did not forget that she had not done so earlier—and began to walk away, turning back with a wave as he stood motionless.

He had not drawn away, this time; he had no longer found a reason.


	6. Chapter 5: An Unclear Road

**Chapter 5: An Unclear Road**

Folders lay scattered across the table: open, stacked on one another, pages askew. Barnaby rustled through a collection of the papers in one, then returned them and closed the manila cover before pushing the folder aside to choose another file. Here, two hours ago, Joyce had delivered a better than average supper (slightly lumpy and woefully under-salted potato soup, salad, wine, and mercifully no Bakewell Surprise); an hour ago, she had swooped in to solve his anagram puzzle in seconds. Half of the blocks remained smothered beneath all the paper, still in the order she had set them. Now, he just read through his reports again and again.

Whatever the day, the crime, the horrid visions he endured, just a few minutes with his wife began to chase everything out of his mind. Not that it always  _stayed_  away, but her presence immediately granted a reprieve, like new and blessed air for a drowning man who finally broke through the surface. With reason, Joyce was often irritated when the workday encroached on what was meant to be their time together; she would hardly be human if she wasn't. Yet the anger rarely lingered, sometimes evaporating with a speed he did not comprehend. If the disconnect between her over allocated enthusiasm and near absent talent for cooking was her greatest flaw—and Barnaby was inclined to think it was—then he had been blessed with good fortune indeed.

By his hand, a cup of fresh tea steamed. But it could wait. Amazing, really, how quickly tests could deliver results now. The SOCO team, Barnaby felt, had only just collected their swatches of matted hair and cotton swabs of blood, fingerprints and scrapings from beneath the corpse's nails. Yet here before him, mysteries were already elucidated and spinning new questions of their own.

A key rattled in the front lock; the door opened and then quickly shut again as feet wandered through the hall and across the sitting room to the kitchen. "Hi, Dad," his daughter said, waving a hand clenched around her keyring.

"Oh, hello, Cully." He smiled up at her before she kissed his cheek. "Sit down, sit down." The manila blurred together, finally a single pile of reports and photos, exposing the blocks. Already, the analysis whirred in the back of his skull, questions Barnaby hardly heard:  _where_ ,  _what_ ,  _why_ ,  _when, who_? They were too familiar to keep quiet.

As she settled into a chair across from him, Cully took a letter—the R—just looking at it, a bit confused. "What's all this?" she asked, just as quickly returning it to—almost—finish the name.

"Something that was nothing, until your mother was good enough to decipher it. 'Maureen', if the last letter shows up."  _Won't be Troy's favorite name_ , Barnaby thought. He didn't recall him mentioning her for...he wasn't sure how long. He'd long since stopped listening for it.

"About the case, are they?"

One by one, Barnaby took the blocks, stacking them in two layers beside the folders. Though any forensic inquiries would be useless by now, they still likely had a place in the case. Their appearance was either a joke and irrelevant, or something calculated by a person intelligent enough to leave no traces behind in the first place; he favored the latter. Either way, Harry the Pool Man had already handled them far too much to seriously hope for a suspect's identity. "I didn't dig them out of the attic to review my spelling lessons."

His daughter grinned. "I'd hope not. Where did you find them, then?"

"Someone has been tossing them over a fence into a pool, one at a time."

"To one of your suspects?"

Barnaby shrugged his shoulders. "One of my suspects  _and_  one of my victims."

The perplexed look was back as she set her elbows on the table, but already fading to interest. "More than one murder?"

His face tightened—visibly, he was sure—and his voice was a bit rougher when he spoke. "No." One of the constant questions answered and noted before he could halt the process:  _who?_  His daughter knew the rumor mill of any Midsomer village to be highly suspect regarding anything but common sentiment, and early radio reports were often just as vague. Little information had been released, so far as he was aware. The crime was reported too late for the morning paper. To inquire if it had transformed into a murder was one thing, but  _more than one_  was what she had said. Knowledge prefaced that statement, not conjecture.

"I thought I heard you come in," Joyce said, her clear voice not enough to drag him out of his deliberations as she stood in the doorway. "Have a good evening?"

Cully did not speak for a moment, just glancing to the table. "Yes, quite nice." Tense words.  _When_ , though that was hardly the most pressing, was now known, clinging to the previous answer.

"Really?" Barnaby said, suspicions and thoughts already transforming into certainties. "And how was Troy?"

Cully frowned as she looked to her mother. "I met Gavin for a cup of tea."  _What_  and  _where_  were now known as well.  _How_  had not made the list, but Barnaby had a guess: that phone call he had interrupted, his sergeant's slightly paler face and hurried goodbye.

He scowled a bit. Maybe it was best to keep  _why_  unanswered. "Again?"

His wife crossed her arms over her chest. "Tom..." She could say so many things with that single word, and he heard it now:  _quiet_. "How is Gavin? I haven't seen him for a while."

"My daily reports aren't enough?"

"Dad!" It was almost...indignation, Barnaby decided. "He's fine, Mum," Cully said, now one hand in her lap as she shifted in the chair. "Still playing cricket, in Causton this time."

"Well that's good to know," Joyce said. "I mostly hear a lot of comments about leaping to conclusions from your father."

"All well deserved," he said.

"Sometimes."

This was not the evening he wanted. The workday so often impinged, and he had almost believed it would do so no more tonight. And, god, not this way! "He has a match on Saturday," Cully continued.

"Oh?" His wife sounded as interested, he decided, as if their daughter was merely discussing a friend.

"Yes, I—I thought I'd go out to see it."

"Did you run into him in town again?" Barnaby asked. He reached for the pile of folders, then stopped. No use ignoring it, searching for a distraction, making it the elephant in the center of the kitchen.

His daughter sighed as she stood. "No, I rang him this afternoon."

So the  _how_  was definite. "I'll suppose that he's your source of information about Midsomer Market?"

"Even if—"

"Well, you didn't mention much about it last night." His wife's voice, again, was an interruption, like she had surely intended it to be. And her face: it was not  _blank_ , but he was unable to read anything there.

"There wasn't much to say about it, then," he said.

Barnaby wasn't accustomed to the weight of the sudden silence, and he couldn't believe his wife or daughter were, either. Perhaps the nearest comparison was Cully's adolescence—fraught with enough unhappy stares for a lifetime—but that time was long past. And it was more than to be expected, choices certain to drive a parent mad and little explanation for them.  _This_  was not anticipated, if there was any  _this_  at all.  _Why should there be?_ he asked himself.

Cully was fidgeting, running her fingers along the back of the chair. He knew the signs: thinking, creating, reworking. "He talked about it," she said after a moment, "some."

"Ah." All she had said was what he already knew. "What else did you talk about?"

She looked to the ceiling for a moment, as if to think and catch her breath. "Nothing you need—"

"Still catching up from the past few months?" Joyce asked, moving quickly across the kitchen. She fiddled with a couple of utensils still resting on the draining board, the clatter of forks and spoons rather louder than needed.

"Yes." The word was sharper, not defensive but guarded, matching her fiercer eyes. "Why didn't you tell Gavin I was doing that production of  _Hamlet_?"

He finally picked up one of the folders, pulling out a fingerprint report; it could have been the postmortem report, for all he cared.  _Any_  report. On the walking stick, a few sets were clear: most belonged to the victim—Marjorie Empson—but the others would be of little consequence even after identification. Every print there matched several others in the dining room. No doubt remained that she had known her murderer, and wasn't it only kind to retrieve a walking stick for a friend in need? No, the stick was exhausted, an excuse for any fingerprints readily available. "Slipped my mind," he said, frowning.

"Are you hungry, Cully?" Joyce asked, gathering the cutlery and opening the proper drawer, metal clattering as she placed them heavily in the wooden divider. "There's plenty of soup left from supper."

"No, but thanks, Mum," Cully said. Sliding her chair under the table, she gave her mother a brief smile. "Good night."

"Are you going to bed already, Cully?" Barnaby asked before she was halfway into the hall. He glanced at his watch: a few minutes before ten. It was hardly early, but certainly not typical of his daughter.

The sharpness on her features had faded, and her face was as impossible to decipher as his wife's had been.  _Like mother, like daughter._  "It's been a long day," she said, then disappeared into the dim corridor. Even muffled by the carpet, he heard every footstep to and up the stairs; those in the upstairs hall were too far to distinguish.

He thrust the forensics report into its folder, distractions no longer necessary. "That's twice in three days, Joyce," he said quietly. It wasn't a whisper, but god, it was an awful enough conversation to have with his wife, let alone with her, too.

"You're overreacting, Tom," Joyce said, slipping around the table to sit where her daughter had, considering the plastic letters for a second. "Just like before."

"I work with the man every day. It's out of the question."

"It's not yours to answer."

"I'm not allowed to be concerned?" He was speaking too loudly, he knew. It wasn't anger, but maybe frustration. They had already been down this path before, all of them. More than once!

"Yes—"

"Then I will be."

"—but...I would have thought you'd avoid leaping to conclusions, as often as you complain about Gavin doing so." Barnaby scowled again, and his wife just sighed. "Anyway, they've been friends for a while."

"Only after..." He couldn't say it, but he was certain she knew: those bloody Pinter tickets, that damn woman, and everything that had come of it all!

"And you made far too much of that at the time, I said it then."

She had smiled, he remembered, almost  _laughed_!  _"She's out. She's got a new boyfriend. Actually, I think he's a policeman, too."_  Like there was nothing wrong, even while his skin prickled and he writhed beneath it. "Every day, Joyce,  _every day_." Day after day, year after year...Did they really think they knew Gavin Troy better than he did?

"You're doing it again."

"What?" he snapped.

"Overreacting."

Even her cool voice was not enough to soothe the thought, the possibility of his daughter—and his damnable bag carrier!—resurrecting past foolishness. Instead, it only speared him with a bit of guilt for his outburst. "What do you want me to do?" he asked, quieter as he slumped forward. This was too much to add to the day.

She touched his hand, her palm smooth on his knuckles. "To not worry, but you're not going to do that." Just as quickly, Joyce pulled her hand away. "She's only just back, surely you can give her a moment to catch up?"

"Twice in three days, that's more than a moment," he said, a grumble deep in his throat following the words.  _God, this is too much._

"You're only doing it to yourself, dear," Joyce said, standing. And then she was at the draining board again, tucking away the dry bowls and plates as if nothing was wrong.

"Why didn't she say—" He had to pause, to breathe. "I am not—"

"You wouldn't be so bothered if you weren't." She wiped the tiled surface by the sink with the tea towel, then replaced it on its loop, simply looking at him as she leaned against the counter's edge and crossed her arms again.

"Joyce—" Barnaby stopped, breathing slower to calm the rising burn in his throat. Even his face felt red. "Joyce, you don't know him."

"Maybe not," she said. "How well do you?"

He scraped the feet of the chair on the floor, standing before he felt the movement, turning almost angrily. "Well enough—"

"You  _don't_." Walking to him, her steady gaze caught his, and the brief surge of fury—he didn't know whom he meant to launch it at—ceased just with that look.  _Be quiet_ , it said, as clearly as when she had spoken his name before. She had practiced it their entire married life, disarming the worries and frustrations of each day. "Neither of us really do," she went on. "You only know  _Sergeant Troy_. She probably knows him better than either of us."

She was right, he realized, as she settled a hand on his shoulder then slid her arm around his back, like she meant to calm him. It wasn't comforting.


	7. Chapter 6: A Bend Up Ahead

**Chapter 6: A Bend Up Ahead**

Barnaby was unsurprised by the spray of gravel as Troy braked rather too hard in front of the Empson house.  _One of these days, he's going to go off and not have a ditch to cushion the car_ _,_ he thought. Releasing his seat belt, he took the photograph from the dashboard, turning it over as he opened the door.

In spite of the number of bodies he had seen, no corpse failed to spark a glimmer of sympathy in him, at first. Except perhaps the Rainbirds. It faded quicker each time, though, and now the frozen sight of Marjorie Empson—eyes open like she could still see her killer, cold blood matted against her cheek and through her hair—meant nothing, had  _been_  nothing almost as soon as he stared down at her over Bullard's shoulder. One quick pang of sadness for another victim, and then it was immediately supplanted by the calculated questions he needed to ask.

Troy slammed his door, clicking the remote on his keyring to lock the car. "Someday," his sergeant said, "they'll be nice enough to arrange murders better."

Barnaby looked up, squinting for a moment in the sunshine. "Who, criminals?"

"Yes."

He laughed as he went around the front of the vehicle, his fingers twitching on the picture's edge. "How so, Troy?"

"You know, actually letting us take our weekends off." They fell in step, walking toward the old door beneath its old-fashioned arch, the tiny stones crunching beneath their shoes. "Like the rest of the country."

"I wouldn't hold my breath."

Troy shrugged. "Maybe, but I can always hope for it, sir."

"After more than twenty-five years," Barnaby said, "I can promise you it will  _not_ happen."

"If you say so."

"Oh, I do." He glanced at the picture again. No, it wasn't right, something there didn't fit with what they knew now. "We don't have time to worry about that today." He dropped his left hand into his pocket, pulling out the house key.  _No receipt necessary this time_ , he mused as he slipped it into the lock, twisting it to open the ancient door.

"Or maybe witnesses will tell the truth on the first go," Troy continued, following him inside.

"That, at least, is  _possible_." Just through the door, Barnaby stopped, frowning as he stared at the dead woman again, the matte paper and its white border another barrier to even empathy. Something... "Look at that, Troy."

The man looked at the photograph, eyes narrowed in a brief moment of concentration. "Look at what, sir?"

" _That_." God, they were both blind. "No rips on either sleeve. It doesn't match Ginny's statement." He strode ahead on the tiled floor toward the bloodstain and looked to the picture once more. Another lie from Ginny Sharp, or they had simply overlooked it yet again? Probably the latter.

"Well, if she lied the first time," Troy began, but Barnaby shook his head.

"No..."

"She could still be lying, sir." He finally closed the door before approaching the staircase, peering at the photograph over the chief inspector's shoulder. "We don't have any reason to believe her now."

"No, we forgot, Troy." Barnaby sighed, tapping the picture against his other hand.  _She needn't have been in the same clothes._ "We didn't ask Ginny Sharp what Mrs. Empson was wearing, did we?"

After a moment, Troy said uncertainly, "Sir?"

Barnaby looked up, at nothing in particular. It  _was_  that simple. "We assumed she was wearing her nightclothes. But Ginny said she'd almost torn off one of Marjorie's sleeves. But there were no rips in the clothes the body was found in." He shook the picture again, annoyed. "Come on, Troy."

He took the stairs two at a time; they had no time to waste today. Though it was a Saturday, both had arrived at the station early to fit in a couple hours of work before his sergeant took to the pitch and his daughter went out to watch. Reaching the upstairs hallway, Barnaby frowned.  _Bloody cheek_ , he thought. But there was no time to spare for that annoyance now, either.

"So we're looking for another shirt, sir?" Troy asked, following as he walked to the open door at the end of the hall.

"What else, Troy?" Barnaby asked as they entered the dead woman's bedroom, handing over the photograph. It was indistinguishable from any other elderly woman's bedroom: ceramic lamps and figurines; unremarkable wooden furniture, all stained brown; a glass vase holding wilted pink orchids; dull paintings in dull frames; a bookshelf laden with a handful of hardbacks; several pictures of her late husband at varying ages...Like the foyer and the dining room where the crime had occurred, there was nothing distinctive at all. And, the pertinent fact, no blouse in sight.

SOCO had only dusted for fingerprints, even as everyone assumed it to be useless. All the forensic evidence possibly connected to the crime was at the foot of the stairs and in the dining room. A missing link could hide anywhere, though, in ridiculous nooks and crannies, the corners that were entirely illogical until the most critical clue was discovered there. But in this room, only the victim's fingerprints had been found, just as expected.  _Bloody waste of time_ , Barnaby thought as he opened the wardrobe door. It was the same at the beginning of every case, the inevitable start: blindly flailing about, investing man-hours to investigate dead ends, and sometimes missing the most important piece.

He pushed the hangers apart, lifting one from the rod spanning the length of the cupboard. The cream colored blouse was intact and he handed it to Troy before he turned back to the wardrobe, shifting a couple more garments aside. His hand landed on a textured green blouse, the rip at the seam gaping and obvious. "Here we are." It fell completely open as he touched it and then turned the hanger, examining it from the other side. If Ginny had seized Marjorie hard enough to leave bruises, he could easily believe the stitching had torn so much.

"Okay," Troy said, glancing at it for a moment, "that's what she was wearing when Ginny came round. I still don't see the significance." He was almost shaking his head, like he meant to dismiss it.

Barnaby gazed across the room, holding the already fraying edge of the sleeve.  _Bruises and a torn shirt from Ginny Sharp, but she changes before she's killed. It's time, there, between the bruises and her death._ "Bullard's theory is that there were  _two_ assailants. Marjorie Empson was hit repeatedly from behind while someone else  _held_ her"—he ran a hand up and down, touching those glistening black marks in his mind—"leaving bruises on her upper arms."

"Are you saying Bullard's wrong?" He heard the disbelief in Troy's voice.

"I think he's just wrong about the timing." Again, he looked at the shirt. It was a wrench in the case, ruining the timeline they had envisioned, but verifying a new one. "What's this blouse tell us?" Not realizing it, he began to walk, circling the foot of the bed, dropping the hanger and garment on the quilt where Troy had left the first. "Ginny Sharp came here to confront Marjorie Empson. They argued. Marjorie attacked Ginny. Ginny grabbed her by the arms, leaving the bruises." Reaching for the air, he seized invisible arms, wrapping his fingers around nonexistent flesh and bone.

Troy took the same path around the bedframe, looking down at this new bit of evidence. "And ripping the blouse."

"Hmm...Yeah." The scene was assembling itself, one piece after another forming a likely picture. "Then Ginny goes. Marjorie gets changed for bed. And then, someone else turns up." Glass shattered in his ears, faint footsteps clicked on the floor and grew ever closer. Had she been frightened or merely worried before taking her walking stick and confronting the stairs, whomever waited at the bottom? He felt his face lighting up, seeing more detail every second. "And that someone else...is the killer."

"Or..." Troy shook his head slightly. "Ginny comes back." But the words were uncertain.

"No no, I don't think Ginny Sharp's the murderer."

"Why not, sir?" Yes, Troy  _was_ uncertain, unsure what to make of the altered situation.

"Well, there's timing for a start." He nearly began to tick the thoughts off on his fingers. "And now we come back to the silver: why would she get rid of it over her own garden wall? No, it's got to be a crude attempt to incriminate her, doesn't it."

His sergeant was catching up, like he was witnessing the same scene. "By someone who knew Ginny'd had a bit of a barny with Marjorie that evening."

_Exactly_ _,_ Barnaby thought as he met Troy's gaze. "That...is very good, Troy."

Troy smiled, and Barnaby noted a touch of pride in the man's pale face. "Thank you, sir."

They fell into a comfortable, almost contemplative silence as they walked down the hall again, as expensively and drearily furnished as the rest of the house—more boring paintings and tables with run-of-the-mill trinkets—and Barnaby turned the new ideas over in his mind. Every step on the stairs was muffled by the thick, patterned rug. "But," he began, "it still leaves us with the question of  _who_."

Reaching the foyer with its bloodied tile, he paused, hearing his sergeant almost stumble to a sudden stop behind him.  _Who? Who?_ And not just  _who_ had killed Marjorie Empson...It was one of the handful of words that had throbbed in his brain earlier in the week, the same questions that had skittered around for the intervening days, chasing their answers. They had surfaced and disappeared, again and again, which was too much to hope for now. More than once, he was certain the unhappiness was blatant, but Troy seemed not to notice.  _Too much else to think about,_ _Barnaby decided._

His sergeant stepped around him carefully to leave the stairs, tucking his hands into his dark grey jacket pockets.  _Never anything out of place_ _,_ Barnaby thought, and today was the same, even for just a few hours. A coat to match the shirt and a shirt to match the tie.  _Like he's playing a bloody part._  No, probably not, he knew.

But for his ineptitude at driving, precision pervaded every corner of Troy's life, just rarely descending into chaos that was most often rectified immediately. All those years ago, when so many people remarked on his youth—civilians and coppers alike were almost amazed that he had attained the rank of detective sergeant so young—the man had breezed through the exams, completed the training with only a handful of comments in his file. Every line in his notebooks was clean and orderly, the statements he transcribed were neat. More than once, Barnaby had wondered what about murder offended the man more: the tragedy of a stolen life or the untidy reality of it. Time and again, though, the smallest bit of turmoil gleamed—an excited word here, a scowl of disgust there—just the barest hints of  _disorder_ beneath the surface.

What had Joyce said?  _"You only know_ Sergeant Troy _. She probably knows him better than either of us."_  As if that wasn't enough!

Beside him, breaking the silence, Troy said, "If you still think it has something to do with the Reading Club, sir, that should narrow it down some."

"Oh, really?" Barnaby grumbled, his mind drifting back to the Empson house. If Troy's conclusions were as precise as his notes, he might have already reached detective inspector.

"Sure." Troy had put the crime scene picture into one of those pockets and now he pulled it out, examining it with narrowed eyes. "The other members: Tamsin Proctor, Sandra Bradshaw, Lady Chetwood. Plus, Ginny Sharp can't be completely ruled out, even if she is telling the truth now."

"Don't forget anyone who might have found out about the Reading Club's actual purpose," Barnaby said, shrugging his shoulders stiffly. Their pool of suspects had hardly changed at all. On the floor before his eyes, she lay there again, her limbs crumpled and her skull broken beneath her walking stick.  _"_ _Couldn't get very far without it,"_ Troy had said, reporting his conversation with Dr. Bradshaw. It was more bitter, then, her life ended by the implement she required for her participation in village  _life_.

"But if they'd had it under wraps for four years, sir—"

"The possibility can't be ruled out, Troy." Barnaby crossed his arms, pinning his tie to his shirt, as he walked ahead, crouching beside the scoured spot where the woman's head had lain. "Three husbands—including a stockbroker—kept in the dark and a pool man with an intimate knowledge of the stock market, for a start." He tapped his fingers against either side of his torso. "Selwyn Proctor, Dr. Bradshaw, Lord Chetwood, Harry Painter..." he muttered. "Even the best kept secrets are sometimes exposed...Can I see that again, Troy?"

"Surely you could toss Lord Chetwood, sir," Troy said, handing the photograph back as Barnaby reached up for it. "I'm not sure he still knows which end is up."

"What did his wife tell you?" Barnaby asked as he stood slowly, the world fading for only a moment in the rush of blood from his head. "No talent for hanging on to money? That's a motive right there." From the picture to the room, his eyes slid from one to the other. There was nothing left to see.

"I suppose."

Again, they were quiet, finally leaving the silent house; the mere sound of the latch catching on the door was alien. Dust was already settling on the remnants of SOCO's fingerprint powder, a grey film that would only thicken in the empty house. "Why don't you put Mrs. Hopkins on the list, then?" Troy said, finding the car keys. "She said Mrs. Empson begged her to join it, but it doesn't sound like she was in on it—the investing, I mean. What if she found out what the Reading Club really did?"

"And was angry enough to kill her friend?" He twisted his mouth, thinking as he walked on the rocky driveway. "Then why on earth would she go round to discover the body?"

The locks released with a click. "To deflect suspicion, sir," Troy said, resting an arm on the car's roof. "We've seen enough murderers cry over their victims."

Barnaby shook his head, opening the passenger door. "No, it's not right." He sat and pulled the door closed, glancing at his watch. "But that'll do for today, Troy. And that should leave you more than enough time for your cricket match." The foul churning in his stomach was back, refusing to settle.

Turning the key in the ignition after he settled into the driver's seat, Troy glanced to the car's clock as it came to life with glowing digital numbers. "Plenty, sir." He was already smiling.

"I hear Cully is coming out to watch you," Barnaby continued as he fastened his seat belt. "Good, clear day for it."

"Well, I thought I'd just—" He coughed, fiddled with the knot in his tie, looked away before he started again. "Thought I'd throw out the suggestion—"

"Oh, your idea, was it?" It could be one or the other, not both, and each possibility was as troubling as the other.

The man struggled with the buckle beside the gearshift like he'd never been in a car before. "It's nice to have someone you know on the sideline, that's all I thought."

"But I heard—it was  _h_ _er_ idea, Troy," Barnaby said, "not  _yours_." He had long since worked on the assumption that those with nothing to hide offered contradictions; one did not reexamine and commit every detail to memory to no end. Teasing out the contradictions from the lies, that was the heart of the job, after all. But would his daughter lie about something so trivial? Going to see a cricket match, it was harmless, no matter who was playing. Discrepancy or falsehood or his mind just trying to latch onto something? None of the choices quelled the unhappiness.

Even as he shifted the car into drive, Troy shrank back into the seat. "I don't really remember whose idea it was, sir." The words came too quickly.

"There's no one else in Causton willing to come watch?"

Troy drummed his fingers on the steering wheel, almost thumped them as he scowled. "My cousin and his wife." He glanced either way on the road before turning onto the pavement with a crunch of gravel, yanking the wheel rather more forcefully than needed. "I see enough of the pair of them when I visit my aunt three or four times a year."

"A spot of bad blood between you?"

"No," Troy sighed, taking his eyes away from the road for the first of what Barnaby was anticipated would be many times before the engine fell quiet in the station's car park. They swerved for a moment before the wheels were righted.

He gripped the door as he often did when Troy drove, though not quite yet with white knuckles. Better safe than sorry. "It doesn't sound like you're sure."

"He thinks his university degree is everything— _and_  he likes to point it out to everyone." At the first bend in the road, the front wheels briefly crossed the center line.

"Come now, Troy: never discount family. They can't be that bad."

Troy shook his head with a wordless murmur of disgust. "He's still an arrogant git."

"You mean The Hawk won't sit on your shoulder when you have to endure their company?" God, that was still worth more than a few laughs: Troy's embarrassment as the comic slipped from the bone dry  _Investment Daily_ and his hurried denial of reading even a single issue as he described the hero with excited, if subdued, knowledge. _"Well, he's this...private detective—who fights evil. And he can turn into a hawk, at night. He's got this amazing night vision..." "Can he fly?" "Only when he's a hawk."_

"The two are as bad as that bloody Inspector Meredith." Barnaby recognized an unpleasant smile creeping across his sergeant's face as he slowed before turning onto the main road. "I wonder if he's made DCI yet?"

There had been spite in that last sentence. Barnaby could still see the pinched, vile face beneath shiny black hair as the chief constable's nephew sat in the incident room, organizing ideas into theories he held back for his own benefit. Buoyed up by his  _earth sciences_  degree, he had climbed the rungs of the hierarchy quicker than far more capable police constables who had entered the force directly, rather than after university. And the man was probably still coasting on that momentum. "Just drive, Troy," Barnaby grumbled, tossing the photograph back onto the dashboard. He loathed the mere thought of him.

The interior of the car was suddenly too warm from the heat of the day and the captured sun. Barnaby loosened his tie, the thick air finally easier to catch in his throat as Inspector Meredith faded. But then, it was back to the same problem. Calculated or chaotic, that was the question at hand. Was it choice, these meetings—pursuit of a lovely face, the thrill of the chase? Or was it chance putting in an appearance—maddening, rash decisions concluded before reason could catch up? And then, what of Cully? Sometimes willful to a fault— _"I rang him this afternoon."_ —yet no stranger to quick, poorly considered actions. Barnaby did not doubt the role of fate in that first encounter, but what to make of its aftermath? What response to assign to  _whom_?

Every possible solution was unpleasant, and he trusted no one to provide a clear answer. Or a damn answer at all.


	8. Chapter 7: Starting Out

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many many many thanks to Rex for preventing this cricket match from being a disaster.

**Chapter 7: Starting Out**

The bus had run surprisingly close to schedule, and she had disembarked on the corner of the green fifteen minutes before the match was to begin. Now ten to one, Cully unpacked the camping chair, setting it firmly at the edge of the pristine and gently sloping grass in front of the small cricket pavilion. Each side of the green was half filled with spectators, some standing, and a few more were gathered at either end. He wasn't there, not that she had thought he would be. Both sides were convened for one last discussion of the game, she expected, a final moment to review strategy. It would have been nice, though, just a quick word.

She had not seen him since Thursday, when he had invited her. Yesterday evening, she had almost rung to talk about nothing in particular, and she still wasn't certain what had stopped her. It wasn't worry about what he would think, or anyone else. It was only a phone call to a friend— Sighing, Cully crossed her legs, lifting one ankle away from a few itching blades of grass and looking at her watch. Seven minutes.

She had thought the same thing before, only a cup of tea with a friend. The memories were already confused, the plain words and actions masking those better left unspoken and undone. And that was only her assessment! If she added Gavin's—but she didn't even  _know_!

Six minutes. Maybe it was the admission that made it so blatant, his absence. She had missed him during those months, the nagging loss waxing and waning without reason, but the teeth were sharper now. How did saying it aloud give it so much life?

Five minutes.

"Quiet!" a woman snapped, and Cully glanced to her left, happy for a distraction from her watch. The woman was older with short, greying hair, leaning forward in her wooden chair. "Get back here!" Several feet away, a small girl turned. "Now!" She pouted as she stomped back. A red-striped blanket was spread open beside the woman's feet, and the girl stood in the middle of it for a moment before sitting heavily, sulking with her arms folded across her chest.

Cully smiled. "Not a fan of the game, is she?"

"Not yet, at least. Her father will change her." A small pair of binoculars hung on a thick lanyard around her neck, and she pressed them to her eyes as she looked to one end of the pitch, twisting the focusing wheel in the center of the lenses. "He has her out at all of them."

_Not the best way,_  Cully thought. "If he keeps doing that, she'll probably never like cricket."

The woman just sniffed, tapping her foot impatiently. "Rubbish."

Cully glanced over her shoulder, ignoring a grumbling stream of chatter from the woman. The interior of the pavilion was dim, though probably light enough inside. She could hardly tell, sitting in the afternoon sun.  _O_ _h well,_  she thought, turning back to the green. On the opposite side, most of the spectators had settled into chairs; it must be the true fans, she decided, clutching binoculars.

Wood creaked behind her and she twisted around: the umpires emerged first, followed by the twenty-two men murmuring in twos and threes. All were clad in white or cream-colored jerseys, some with stripes around the neck. The team members were indistinguishable to her—and then she saw him, near the back of the group. His pale jersey—a V of black and blue stripes ran down from his shoulders, matched around the wrist- and waistbands—was immaculate and she was certain his trousers were neatly pressed.  _Never anything out of place,_  she thought. She only recalled seeing him in anything but a suit and tie a handful of times, and only once or twice when he had not been clean-shaven.

Cully's face brightened as she lifted her arm, waving when he left the final step. He did not look at the man beside him even before they finished speaking, walking away quicker than was polite. "Hello," he said, almost grinning as he stopped a couple feet from her.

A sudden nervous energy prickled on her skin as she twisted around, setting her elbow on the top of the chair's back to steady herself. Her head was spinning, replaying their last conversation, and it was ready to color anything she could think, let alone say. "Sorry I didn't get a chance to say hello earlier," she finally said. That, at least, was true. "I thought I was here early enough."

"Oh, no worries," he said. "Our captain had us all cordoned off for a while, going over every detail. We're up against a strong side today." He shook his head as one of his hands dropped onto the back of the chair, grazing her arm. "I think he would have had us practice this morning, if he'd had the chance."

"That hardly seems a good idea, Gavin."

He shrugged his shoulders. "It's one step beyond dedication, that's all. He's almost obsessed."

"Is it a short match today?"

"Yeah..." His voice was distant, his eyes drawn to the field. "Twenty overs each. We'd be here all evening for any more." He was gone, Cully realized, already considering wickets and outs and runs.

Both captains approached the center of the pitch—it was suddenly quiet, like words were known to jeopardize the beginning of a match—standing on either side of one of the umpires in his pristine white jacket. They shook hands before the umpire flipped the coin into the air, but Cully was too far away to see who called the toss as it spun to the ground.

"Oh, damn," the woman hissed, dropping her binoculars. The umpire handed the scarlet ball to one of the captains, who waved for his men to take the field. "He never calls it properly."

"Got to go," Gavin said, "we're fielding first. I'll talk to you at the interval."

"Good luck," Cully said, drawing her arm back as he walked away, turning to watch both sides take their positions on the pitch. Most were scattered around the green, and she wondered if Gavin would be bowling. Probably. When she had watched him play for Midsomer Worthy, he had bowled almost as much as the laws permitted, and well.

"I hope we won't need  _luck_ ," the woman beside her muttered. Cully sighed as she crossed her arms, tucking her fingers beneath her elbows and sinking further back in her chair. If the woman kept up her bloody commentary, it might be a long afternoon.

The grating voice never fell silent—her endless complaints about various players and the umpires' decisions were only broken when she snapped at her granddaughter—but Cully ceased to listen as the first ball was completed. The overs came and went swiftly, punctuated by bats cracking against the dark red leather sphere, the occasional clatter of wood as wickets were broken, and the pounding of shoes on the pitch.

Gavin was to her left, bowling whenever the striker stood opposite, then fielding through the next over. He appeared almost at home, his occasionally awkward gait vanishing in each run-up to the crease. With each delivery, he was almost—elegant, his arm as precise and measured as it was relaxed.

Every now and then, Cully reminded herself to worry about the score. Despite the efforts of Gavin's side, the runs were swiftly adding up, though the pace slowed when the early batters left the field. Each wicket fell, balls were caught, and the time slipped away. She wasn't paying attention, she realized, as the innings came to an end. They could have played any game—cricket, football, rugby—for all she remembered. A jumble of thoughts had replaced any consideration for it, chasing one another in a confused sprint.

The men were leaving the field, each side clustering together for a moment.  _More strategy,_  she thought unhappily as she stood, slipping her hands into the back pockets of her jeans. Her legs were stiff and her fingers were cold. Rather than rising through the afternoon, the temperature had fallen, and the once clear sky was vanishing behind patches of tattered clouds; she wished she had worn her windcheater, not just a jumper.

The sides dispersed after a few minutes, the players ducking into the pavilion for a glass of water, perhaps a quick bite to eat, and to retrieve or set down their equipment. She had hoped to speak to Gavin, but he, too, disappeared, and a pang of frustration shot through her.  _God,_  Cully thought,  _you're being ridiculous. He's here for the match, not to talk to you._

The few minutes remaining in the interval ticked away, the men on Gavin's side toting bats and sporting those ridiculous white leg pads when they appeared. She had attended her share of cricket matches whilst at school, but never watched with much more than mild interest. In truth, she felt rather how Gavin must still feel at the theater, ever so slightly misplaced.

He was in the middle of the group this time, sharing a few final words before his companion walked around the haphazard collection of chairs to take the field and the nine men waiting to bat scattered along the front of the small building. Her mouth was dry—though she wasn't thirsty—and each new footstep on the bright, crisp grass was heavier than the one before. Suddenly, close enough to speak to him, Cully had no idea what to say.

"Going well, is it?" she asked, and immediately wished she had said anything else as she glanced at the scoreboard. 173 for 5. She barely recalled anything that had occurred on the field. Once, in the middle of the innings, she had realized more than twenty runs had been scored; she hadn't even noticed. And the last _seventy_...Awkwardly, she wrapped her right hand around her left elbow—a distraction. All she remembered was watching him bowl.

"God, no," he said, frowning briefly, his eyes running over the field as the first ball was hit. "They scored too many runs."

She leaned back against the railing, looking over the spectators' heads as well.  _Nothing wrong with that,_  she thought. If she was here to watch, she might as well feign interest. "Where are you—in the batting order?"

"Third."

Another flash of disappointment flared; no matter how well the team played, he would take the field shortly. "At least you don't need to worry about them any more."

He pushed one of his shirt sleeves up for a moment, releasing a quiet breath as he tugged it down again, like he was fiddling, doing nothing but occupying his fingers. As she had done. "A lot of runs to make up." At one end of the pitch, leather smacked against the wicket-keeper's gloves as he seized the ball, thrown from the opposite crease; he broke the wicket with a quick twist of his arm, drawing cheers and applause from half the crowd.

"And that's me," Gavin said, reaching down for his bat. "I'll talk to you when I get back."

"Not too soon?"

"I hope not," he said.

"Well, merde in your eyes," she said, smiling as he checked the buckle on one of his shin guards.

"What?"

"I could tell you to break a leg instead."

"Uh,  _no_ ," he said, scuffing his shoes on the grass before heading out to the pitch.

Gavin was an all-rounder, Cully quickly decided. The runs ticked up between him and the other batsman, beginning to eat into the other side's lead. She did not sit down again—better to stretch her legs and have a moment's peace.

The other batter soon hit the ball too high, almost directly into a fielder's hands. The next two men came and went in quick succession, the first run out and the second caught leg before wicket. And each time Gavin crossed the pitch, successfully scoring another run or two, her disappointment was touched with annoyance, if only slightly. He was, she tried to remember, here to  _win_. But the relief was simple when he was run out as well, no conscience insisting she feel guilt when he walked off, his unhappiness clear.

He said nothing as he removed the padding from his legs, just shaking his head with an occasional sigh. "You did well, Gavin," Cully said.

"A job well done indeed," the woman muttered, though she scowled, already staring through her binoculars again.

"Thanks," Gavin said dully, setting his cricket bat against the back of Cully's camping chair beside the pads. "I didn't realize I was that far off the crease."

"No one bats forever," Cully said. Not that it would help, she knew. If nothing else, he was competitive. It was certainly at the heart of his irritation whenever her father took advice from others instead of him.

"I guess."

"Don't sound so disappointed—"

"Still a damn sight better than that first fool."  _God,_  Cully thought,  _doesn't she care about interrupting anyone?_

"It's never easy being the opener," he began, but the woman shook her head defiantly.

"Maybe if you're the  _first_  side."

His eyes narrowed at her. "Right..." He took a few steps away, and Cully followed, more than happy to leave the woman behind.

Gavin offered his own comments on the game: each man's strengths and weaknesses when he was on strike; excitement as runs were scored and balls were fumbled by the fielders; quieter frustrations as each man was dismissed, leaning closer to her and almost whispering for the last. As the number of men remaining dwindled, he hardly said anything, barely looked to the field.

"What's wrong?" Cully asked, surprised as she looked at him. His face was incomprehensible, wavering between upset and angry.

"This is about to go to hell."

"It can't be that bad."

"It will be," he said. Before Cully recognized the movement, she touched his shoulder lightly. He was almost a petulant child wanting comfort. She had never seen him so engrossed in anything before—

No. As soon as the thought ran its course, she knew it wasn't true. He had looked straight at her that night when he sat beside the fiddler—almost a happy eternity instead of happy, short minutes—and she had realized then that he saw no one else. Maybe it was the wine, she had wondered, even after...It remained a mystery, what she would have seen if she had found the courage to meet his eyes.

Drawing her hand back, Cully felt the flush spreading over her skin. Not embarrassment at the memory—it was still too muddled to understand. Maybe she never would. But as she dropped her arm to her side, her fingers were already cold again. She had to close her eyes briefly, and when she opened them, Cully forced herself to stare at the field.

The ninth man was already there, tapping his bat on the packed earth before the wicket. Across the pitch, the bowler ran, launching the ball; it bounced, spinning as it rose. The batsman swung, but only touched the air, almost jumping away from the crease when the ball shot past. And then it was finished, the final over completed as the wicket-keeper snatched the ball from the pitch and thrust his arm forward to knock the bails to the dusty ground.

"Out stumped on the last over. Pathetic," Gavin said, stepping back for a moment, shaking his head as he looked down. He sighed, then brought his face up again, almost sneering as both teams quit the field. They merged into a rabble of handshakes, words of congratulations and condolences for a game well played. He did not join them. "173 for 5 against 131 for 9. Pathetic," he said again, walking forward to retrieve his equipment.

"No one's perfect," Cully said, "cricketer or otherwise."

"Maybe," he said, turning back to her, pads and bat tucked under one arm, "but it went downhill from the seventh man. It would have gotten worse, too. Useless gits left—" A strange sound came from that woman as she sat straighter in her chair. "Nothing—more practice wouldn't help," he added, taking a quick breath.

There was no truth in the last sentence, Cully knew, no apology at all. "Go on," she said.

Both teams disappeared into the pavilion, Gavin's side probably to a tongue lashing and another lecture on strategy, she supposed, if his opinion of the team captain was correct. But it was finished—and what now? Through all her impatience and eagerness for it to end, any moment to talk to him, Cully hadn't even considered it. The match had hardly existed, and now her thoughts had vanished.

She focused on every step to pack the chair: finding the joints where the metal folded, how far to hold the cover back to avoid snagging it, tightening the string around the top to secure it like it was a task she had never performed before. Every motion was slow and deliberate while she waited—mindless. Were they really just minutes, she wondered, holding the collapsed chair in one arm, then the other, hardly noticing as she shifted it. It was that same eternity, she realized, stretching further and further as the men trickled out of the pavilion. She was almost pacing before he appeared.

Cully had never seen him quite like this as he descended the stairs, his equipment stored in the holdall he carried. He was not disheveled, but he was so different from the man she was accustomed to seeing, somehow in between the two images she had. His grey coat lay over one arm, his tie was absent, the top two buttons of his pale shirt were unfastened, and his hair—usually so neatly combed—was still tangled from running.

So strange, but she rather liked him like this, despite the sullen frown he still wore when he reached her.  _Men and their sports,_  she thought. "Gavin, it was a good match," she said as they walked away from the green, his steps as slow as hers.

"Hardly. Last man out stumped, no trouble at all." He glanced to the woman, shoving her binoculars into a bag and folding the blanket her granddaughter had sat on through the match; the girl's bored gaze had finally disappeared. Gavin tilted his head closer to hers, adding with a nod towards the woman, "Her son's bloody  _useless_  on strike. A good wicket-keeper, but I think the captain would keep him out of the batting order if he could. Didn't have to today."

"It's just a game," she said, shivering as a quick burst of wind cut through her jumper.

"We lost by four wickets, Cully!"

"Well, I'm sure it will be better next time."

"Yeah," he murmured, shaking his head.

Neither of them spoke while they walked. It might be easier to go separately, Cully knew, to part ways now. But the car park was situated quite close to the bus stop, so, really, why shouldn't they walk together? The silence was unpleasant—yet what was there to say? The faintest swish of their shoes through the grass was too loud already. Her mind was still empty. Maybe she could find another vague word to soothe his disappointment, but that was all. And what good was that?

He stopped as they reached the tarmac. "Did you drive, Cully?" he said, the words slow, almost rehearsed.

"No," she said, suddenly breathing easier, "I took the bus. Almost cycled, but this thing was too much of a nuisance already." It was unruly enough just keeping it under her arm.

"Can I give you a lift home?"

And easier. "Sure." The tension in her stomach loosened, like a vice was released. "Thanks."

She took another step, but he did not as he moved the holdall to his other hand. "Do you—" He paused, but the next words came quicker. "Do you fancy a drink, first?"

She smiled, more of the tightness disappearing. "A real drink, this time?"

"Of course. Tea won't do after that disaster."

It was almost gone, now. "I'd like that."


	9. Chapter 8: Shifting Gears

**Chapter 8: Shifting Gears**

Little by little, the cricket match was fading from his mind, Cully felt. His holdall and her chair were in the boot of his car, two fewer things to worry about, and maybe their absence was helping. They had been quiet while they walked, yet it was somehow different. She had almost slipped her arm around his as she had that first night, when she had not given it a thought. Something had stayed her hand. The name for it escaped her as she sat, thinking while she waited for him to return from the bar. The silence was simpler, but the mess was still simmering beneath it.

He set the glasses on the battered table—red wine and a half pint of lager—before settling into the chair beside her. Not across the table today but beside her, their shoulders maybe a foot apart, their arms closer. His skin was still tinged with pink, quite pronounced in the artificial light. "Is the world of mobile libraries as exciting as before?" he asked, raising his glass to her before taking a drink.

"Just the same old ladies gossiping," Cully said, returning the gesture.  _Will it always be like this?_ she thought.  _Talking about nothing?_  "That's the most interesting part. Otherwise, it's organizing the books."

"A dull job? Must be nice."

"They didn't have too much to say about your murder, though."

His eyebrows rose for a moment. "That would be a first."

"I did spend most of the week on the other side of the county, Gavin." She tapped her fingers on the base of her glass. "But how is it going? Dad's said almost nothing about it since Thursday."

"The same as usual: people lying at every turn, investigation taking over all hours of the day. I already have a few to put down in the log."

"Oh?" Cully had a quick sip of wine. That was the curse of the job, she knew, the absence of a set schedule. But it could be turned to advantage as well; she remembered one summer spent roaming through much of France for what she had thought would be forever, due to the combination of overtime and regular holiday time.

"Got dragged back out to the crime scene this morning by your dad," he said, shaking his head. "By now you'd think we could eliminate a few suspects instead of adding more to the list."

"Never a day off?"

"Or an evening, either."

"Well," she said, shifting toward him in her chair, "you'll have to find one, if my audition goes well."

He took a larger drink this time. "Another one?" he asked.

Gavin was almost nervous, Cully decided. No, he  _was_. "Yes, next week. The Causton theater is going to present  _Pygmalion_ ," she said. "I don't think I've been in one of his plays since university."

"That's more recently than the last time I read one. Year 10, I think."

"Too busy with Pinter?"

He leaned back in his chair, one hand still lingering on the table as he gently drummed his fingers, almost crossly. "I  _slaved_  over those things, Cully." He moved forward again. "But I'm not sure I could tell you a thing about any of them now. Too long ago."

"You mean all but  _one_." It had been such a strange coincidence: her father somehow procuring tickets to the sold-out play, tickets delivered by Gavin who, despite his dearth of experience attending the theater, had at least read the play. The first act, she had called it, but whether a comedy or a tragedy...

"If it makes you happy to believe that," he said, quieter.

That uncomfortable silence was rising again, tightening around her stomach anew. Suddenly, he was too close—but her limbs were leaden, too heavy to move. "Well," she said, needing a few seconds to find her voice, "you'll still have to find some time to see it if I'm cast."

"I always have." His voice was flat as he took another deep drink from his glass, staring across the pub. "Nothing—of interest in London?"

"They're all an ordeal to get into, even the auditions," she said, slipping her arm away from his, blood finally returning. She took another mouthful of wine, rather more than before, almost more than was polite. "Besides, I've only just come back to Causton, I've got no reason to leave yet."

"You can't stay in Causton forever," he said, "not if you're wanting to just work in the theater."

"Not forever, but I can stay for a while." Another drink. "Surely you don't  _want_  me to go."

He looked at her again in disbelief, his hand sliding towards hers—stopping as he curled his fingers under his palm. It was trembling. "Of course not—"

"Then why are you complaining if I want to stay?"

"I'm not complaining, Cully," he said, swirling the lager in his nearly empty glass. One more distraction. "Just...wondering."

She pulled her arm away completely now, nearly off the table. "What do you need to do that for?"

"I don't know."

_God,_  she thought. "Yes, you do. You're not the best liar the world's ever known, Gavin, at least for the little white lies."

Seeing off the last of his lager, Gavin pushed the glass away. "Did you expect anything else?"

"What does that even mean?" Cully asked. She heard her voice rising, each word clipped.

" _Auditions_ , Cully," he said after a moment. His body was rigid, and he was staring at the table. "They're the only way you've ever left..."

She heard the rest of the sentence. "Gavin, that's not true," she began. "I went to Edinburgh, Oxford, Perth—only long enough for the plays—"

"Yeah..." He shook his head.

"I already told you, it's in Causton." He didn't believe her, Cully realized. "Gavin, what else should I have  _done_? It's not the same thing."

"I know—"

"Can't we just let those alone?" The last of her wine had vanished already, though she did not remember drinking it. "We've been over it all before."

"Cully, I'm sorry—"

"What else do you want me to say?" The crowd was suddenly too loud, dozens of voices melding into white noise ringing in her skull, the air too thick. "I don't have to stay in Causton—I  _want_  to stay here for now. What else do you want me to do?" She pushed her chair back—she couldn't sit any longer. "Can we go outside, Gavin? It's too crowded in here."

He didn't answer, but stood instead, pulling his chair away from the table for her to slip by. Stepping through the doorway into the open air—the sun had finally abandoned its quest to break through the clouds—Cully felt the eyes in the pub following her, both of them. People were the same everywhere, she knew, ready to pry into the impending misery of others.

Taking a few paces down the sidewalk—finally able to breathe—she turned back. Behind her, Gavin was wearing the same unhappiness she felt. Almost guilt. "I'm sorry," he said again.

A gust of wind blew out of the dreary sky, tossing hair across her face. "I know," she said, brushing the wild strands back, "you already said that—"

His hand tightened on hers: suddenly, unexpectedly. And when had he come so close? Only a few inches remained between them. "Cully," he said, "I don't want to do all of that again. That's all I mean."

She had to swallow, her mouth dry again as she pulled her hand out of his. "Then that's two of us." It was the same wretched silence, already heavier than the air in the pub, waiting for a stilted word or an awkward sentence, anything to break it.

"I think I'd—better go, Gavin," Cully said, not bothering to look at her watch. The time didn't matter at all. "I promised Mum I'd help her with dinner this evening." Salad, quail, fresh peas, rice pilaf: all the culinary pleasures that lit her father's eyes. "Well, I might have made the promise more to Dad, now that I think about it."

It shattered when Gavin laughed: briefly, quietly, but he had. "Sure," he said, dropping his hand into his pocket to find his car keys. "I wouldn't want to see your father without food again."

"It couldn't have been that bad."

"You had the easy part of the job."

"You didn't sit with him at the dinner table every night."

He twisted the keys around his fingers. "No, but I had to listen to him mutter whenever he looked at the lunch you packed him."

They were almost to the car park, the soft grass transforming to harsh tarmac, before he spoke again. "So, next week, when is your audition?"

"Tuesday," Cully said. Most of the cars parked through the match had vanished, and the few remaining looked lonesome, waiting to be claimed. His car was dark, that was all she recalled. "Tuesday morning."  _When_  had been so unimportant, displaced by  _where_.

At the passenger side of one car—four doors, surprisingly unremarkable—he stopped, stepping back for her to go ahead. He pressed a button on the remote control dangling from the keyring, and the locks on the doors released with a quiet click.

"How long do you think it will be until you find out?" he asked, resting his arm on the roof, keys in hand, just in front of the passenger door's edge. "About the audition?"

"It depends," she said. "Sometimes it's a few weeks, one time I heard the result the next day." Wouldn't that be nice, happening once more. "It can't be too long, the opening night's only a month or so— Gavin?"

He was looking over her shoulder at the green, frowning again. "Four wickets and forty bloody runs," he whispered, tapping the keys furiously, the metallic echo quickening. " _Forty_!"

_God_ , she thought, dropping her head back for a moment. "Not the cricket match  _again_ , Gavin!"

"Sorry," he said, pulling his arm away from the car's roof.

"No, you're not, Gavin. I already told you once, you're not the best at lying about the small things."

"But I can manage just fine with the large things?"

"I didn't say—" She turned away from another gust of wind, from his face. It was easier, for he appeared almost hurt. "Let's just leave it, Gavin."

The keys rattled again. "Well, what are your plans if it doesn't work out?"

Cully hadn't considered what to do if the audition was unsuccessful—and how complicated the question already was. It had been such an obvious choice to audition, and it was  _her_  choice, no one else's. Certainly not his! "I don't know. I might head back to Cambridge," she said after a moment, leaning against the car for a moment, "just to look round to see if anything's available. Or the Fringe Festival, too, back in Edinburgh—some of the larger productions—"

She couldn't breathe, couldn't move her newly paralyzed lungs and limbs as he kissed her. His hand wrapped around hers again gently, warm skin against her cool fingers, and his grasp wasn't  _worried_  now, but—hopeful?

Deep in her chest, her heart throbbed, and Cully refused to believe only her pulse pounded in her ears. It was deafening—and so quickly gone, a cruel absence already taking its place. This was not like before, either when too much wine had erased the remnants of crumbling sense or when persistent questions demanded answers destined to be only half-realized in the crisp moonlight.

Those moments were a lifetime ago, or memories belonging to someone else. No,  _she_  had never been here before: peering into Gavin's pale face, his cheeks only touched by exertion, the pink tinge no longer hiding a query of  _what if_. The past had vanished, only as real as a dream. Could you kiss someone for the first time  _three_ times? Once truly the first, only to be followed by moments so fresh they erased those that had come before. Each new beginning was so new and clean, even if one was so fleeting that it hardly happened at all.

"I'll—just hope it goes well, then," he said, hardly a whisper. This afternoon, he was so very different from the man she had met years ago: rough around the edges, uncertain.

"Yes." Her hand shook—just now, her entire body shivered—and she had to rehearse every word before she spoke. "Can—can I get in, Gavin?"

"Oh," he said, finally lifting the handle, like he had forgotten about ever driving her home, "yes." He did not take his hand from hers until he closed the door.

All through Causton, the drone of the engine was the only sound, just broken by the occasional din of the street; there seemed to be nothing more to say. Once, Cully almost pointed out a turn, but it wasn't necessary. Perhaps he would make a better navigator in the passenger's seat, she thought, her seat belt tightening across her chest when he stopped short at a traffic light. At least he remembered the route, if not the rules of the road.

"You're welcome to stay," she said as he made a turn onto the final street. The final words caught in her throat.  _"You're welcome to stay for dinner." What are you doing?_ "I'm sure we'll have more than enough. The recipes are always written for four." Only three quail were prepared, but another could be dressed; all the other dishes could easily be increased...For a moment, she looked out the window at the identical houses blurring into one another, not wanting to see him answer. "And you must be hungry."

The wheels screeched as he turned into the driveway too quickly, and the car jerked to a stop when he pressed his foot too heavily on the brake pedal. "No," he said finally, sliding the keys from the ignition, "but thanks—all the same."

It was a relief and a disappointment as she climbed out of the car: a calm end to a confused day, a clear answer to a question she'd not even considered before voicing. _A bit safer with my feet on the ground,_  she thought as she closed the door.

The wind was rising even while the sun peered through the clouds at last, whipping her hair around her face again, biting her skin. Gavin, too, had closed his door, and already had the boot open. His bag and the chair had shifted during the drive, and he pushed the holdall toward the back, tugging the folded chair out from beneath it. He held it, not moving for a few seconds. "Gavin?"

"Ah, sorry."

"That's your word of the day, 'sorry'."

He held the chair out to her and Cully took it, one hand brushing his. "Well, I think it had to be," he said.

"Are you sure? About dinner?" she asked, setting the end of the camping chair on the tarmac as he slammed the boot closed. Touching his elbow, she smiled, leaning closer. "I won't report how many times you forgot to use the indicator."

The scowl was false, she knew, as he pulled the key from the lock. "Yes, I'm sure," he said, nodding his head toward the door. "You'd better go on."

No, not yet. Cully tightened her fingers on his sleeve, and it was not a choice as she kissed him. Warmth spread over her cheeks—her skin was not flushing but instead sapping the heat from him even as she stepped back quickly. Too soon.

"I'll see you later, then," she said finally, peeling her fingers from his shirt and picking up the chair. If she did not do so now...

"Yeah, see you," he said, quieter. Every breath he exhaled still reached her face. If she didn't go...

Cully turned then, taking quick steps on the sidewalk to the door, almost running. She had fallen into the chasm: betwixt and between, unable to stay and unable to go. It was safer to go, it always had been. Everything else remained a mystery—when she considered Gavin, that was all it had  _ever_  been—but she couldn't think about it.

Thrusting her key into the lock, twisting the doorknob, she had to look back. It was the same compulsion that had forced her to call him just two days ago, to kiss him now. Still standing by the boot of the car, his arms hanging at his side like they always did, he was watching her—now she knew it was blood rushing over her face.

It had not faded, that gentle heat she had found a minute ago, and she almost hoped it never would.


	10. Chapter 9: Looking Both Ways

**Chapter 9: Looking Both Ways**

Joyce was reading in the front sitting room—her back to the window to catch the early evening sun as it reemerged from behind the clouds—when she heard the car, taking its last turn rather too fast. She needn't even look to guess the driver. If nothing else, Tom was right about Gavin's driving habits. Her husband had appeared almost ill the first evening he returned from a day in Gavin's car: he had been appalled, stunned, and more than a little wary of his newly promoted sergeant's road skills.

She returned to her book, one of the many devoted to gardening she and Tom had collected throughout their marriage. Several years old with battered edges and corners, it had seen particularly heavy use after their previous move had offered a blank slate in the back garden. Its glossy pages were bursting with photographs of  _Aconitum_  in every color, pastel blue  _Centaurea cyanus_ , vibrant  _Rosa_  plunging madly over trellises, glossy green  _Hedera_  climbing walls and spreading across stones...It was a shame that digging up much more of the lawn would leave no room for the grass. Every time she looked through any of the books on the shelves, she rediscovered another lovely flower or shrub.

A minute went by before she realized Cully had still not come in. It was the sound that drew Joyce's attention, or rather the lack of it: neither a final car door shutting as Gavin prepared to leave nor the front door opening, nothing at all. Turning to the window, she pushed the curtain to one side. They were just standing, talking at the boot of the car. Exchanging a final word about the match, perhaps? Probably. It had gone rather long—

It was so brief, she nearly missed it, and it could have almost been anything. Perhaps one more whispered sentence or a brief laugh, yet it was none of those things, Joyce felt— _knew_ —immediately. Cully's was facing away from her, but both their figures were clear: her fingers on his arm, his hand almost at the small of her back before he pulled it away. And it passed so quickly, it might not have happened at all.

Joyce let the curtain fall, sitting straight again. Unexpected, but somehow unsurprising. For all the words she had spoken on Thursday evening, Cully had  _said_  nothing at all. Only the barest outline had been given, like whatever remained was something for her alone. For her and Gavin, the revival of a private world.  _"What else did you talk about?"_  Tom had asked, and the only response had been another question, almost an accusation.  _"Why didn't you tell Gavin I was doing that production of_  Hamlet _?"_ Tense words from both and no answers.

After another long moment a key turned in the lock, the familiar noise of the street drifting in the open door—but she did not hear a car engine. "Hi, Mum," Cully said, closing the door as she stepped inside, just missing the end of the folded chair.

Joyce closed the book. "I was wondering when you'd be back," she said. "Was it a good match?"

Her daughter groaned, sitting heavily on the couch beside her, the canvas parcel leaning against her knee. She shrank into the cushion, her limbs loose, almost weary. "Well,  _I_  thought so."

"That doesn't sound good." Cully's cheeks were tinged red, Joyce saw, and it was already fading.  _Not from the sun_ , she thought.

"The way Gavin complained, you'd think it was the worst match of cricket ever played."

"They lost?" Joyce asked.

"Yeah," Cully said quietly. Her eyes were vacant, her mind elsewhere.  _Still watching the game,_  Joyce thought. "I thought he played quite well, though."

"He seemed to before," Joyce said.

"I think it was better this time," Cully said, brushing hair from her face. "He had a chance to bat today. They actually got through both innings."

"I'd hope so," Joyce set her book on the table by the end of the couch, sliding forward to the edge, ready to stand. "But now that you're back, best to get dinner on, I think."

Whenever she was at home, Cully took charge of the kitchen and Joyce was only too pleased to step aside. So was Tom, she knew, after one too many evenings had begun with a new and interesting dish—and finished in an affair with indigestion. While her cooking was experimental and adventurous, Joyce never pretended she had produced a gourmet meal, despite many efforts. "Just follow the recipe," the authors and presenters said, "and the result will be fantastic!" Well, she always did so and the results were always  _anything_  but fantastic.

Now, Joyce contented herself with heeding her daughter's instructions: cleaning the salad greens—rocket, baby spinach, and freshly chopped leaf lettuce—checking the timer for the quail, removing serving dishes and plates from the cupboards. The air was thick with onion, garlic, and butter, all simmering with the rice. Herbs gave up their earthy fragrance, already laying bruised on the chopping board. Acid cut through the melding scents as Cully drizzled red wine vinegar into a dish of olive oil, whisking briefly with a fork.

"Did Gavin give you a lift?" Joyce asked, setting the cutlery beside the stack of plain white dinner plates. That was all she would say; whatever Cully decided to say about the drive was her choice. As it should be, though there was no answer. "Did the match run long?"

"We talked for a while, after the end," Cully said, staring at the salad dressing as she added a pinch of salt.

"What about?"

"Just—the same sorts of things." Her daughter pushed the bowl aside. "I didn't realize I hadn't told him about the audition at the Playhouse."

Taking the utensils to the table, Joyce asked, "What did he think?"

"He wished me luck." The pan of rice clinked as she moved it to a trivet, the lid still in place to trap the heat until it was transferred to a bowl and the herbs folded in.

The wine glasses already marked each setting as Joyce laid out the knives and forks. "Why wouldn't he?" Opening the oven to glance at the quail, the skin sizzling and crackling, Cully was silent. "He's been to all your plays here, or nearly all of them. Opening night, usually."

"I know, I remember," Cully said, closing the oven door. Standing straight again, she reached for the dressing bowl once more, beating in the salt. Tasting the vinaigrette, she added another dash of salt. "And he told me."

"It's a pity you didn't ask—"

"How much is left on the timer, Mum?"

Joyce ignored the sharper words as she checked the black numbers ticking down on the grey screen. It was more than she should have said anyway. "Three minutes."

Her daughter was a quiet flurry of activity: dropping newly shelled peas into simmering water; transferring the pilaf to its dish before adding the parsley and chervil, then covering it again; stirring the now brilliantly green peas and draining them, steam laced with the vegetal smell rising as she shook the colander. And once the timer began its incessant beeping, she was already prepared with an oven glove, removing the tray of quail from the oven. Perhaps it was the theater training that kept her so aware of everything whirling around her, the talent that allowed her to remember lines, moves, and cues simultaneously. Whatever it was, Joyce was grateful for it, just as she knew Tom would be. Especially Tom.

Long ago, Joyce had observed that men had an uncanny ability to avoid kitchens when it suited them, her husband included. At least he knew to remain outside of the room while sharp objects still might fly and hot pans remained if he muttered endlessly about his work. For whatever reason—Joyce never quite understood how—he knew when the kitchen transitioned from production to presentation, and this night was no different. A quail already sat on each plate, the rice and peas steamed in their dishes on the table, and Cully had just dressed the salad when Joyce heard him approach.

Except for the first few hours of the day, Tom had sat at his desk in the study, bent over files and photographs, and reports. Examining, comparing, reading  _and_ rereading, like the first contradiction would suddenly appear, revealing opportunity or motive.  _Always the same,_  she thought.  _He won't really take a moment off until it's finished._

"Ah, Cully," he said, coming into the kitchen. "Good to finally see you again today."

"Hi, Dad," she said, washing her hands a final time, shaking them over the sink before reaching for a towel.

"So, what's going on here?" he asked eagerly, kissing his wife's cheek.

"Salad," Joyce said, setting the final bowl in the center of the table, "rice pilaf, peas, and quail." It all looked and smelled delicious. The dinners she managed often appeared lovely, but something inevitably went wrong.

Her husband bent over the plate at his seat, his eyes narrowed as he examined the bird's crisp brown skin and sniffed it curiously. " _More_  quail?"

"Dad, they're not that bad." Her hands dry, Cully hung the towel up again.

"A lot of work for a very small reward." Now he peered at the bottles of wine on the counter, reading the labels, debating his choice. It was his contribution to every meal, selecting and pouring the wine.

"Don't complain until you try it, Tom," Joyce said, returning to the main section of the kitchen, touching Cully's shoulder gently. "Your daughter's outdone herself this evening."

"I'm not complaining—"

"Really?" she asked, searching through a drawer to find the corkscrew.

He finally reached for a bottle, lifting it delicately. "Or not much."

"That's more the truth of it," Cully said.

Barnaby scowled, taking the corkscrew from Joyce. "I have learned from experience."

The wine was quickly poured, the salad, peas, and rice distributed. More than once, Joyce saw her husband almost speak, then change his mind. Choosing his words carefully, she suspected, as he should.

"How was the cricket match today?" he finally asked, meticulously cutting a piece of meat from the bird.

"They lost by four wickets," Cully said.

Barnaby's eyebrows rose, his fork pausing for a moment in the air. "Glad I won't have to see the aftermath of that." He took a moment to try the first bite before he spoke again. "Very nice, Cully."

"Thank you, Dad." She slid a bit of salad onto her fork slowly.

"How was Troy's innings?" He sliced another piece of quail with more enthusiasm.

"It went well," she said quietly. Her thoughts were still there, Joyce knew. "Not that  _he'd_  say that," Cully added.

"Never good enough for themselves, are they, cricket players," Barnaby said, now sampling the pilaf, butter yellow grains dotted with green.

"Competitive people never are, dear," Joyce said.

Her husband smiled. "That would leave Troy happy only if he batted first and still managed to be the last man."

"Dad!"

"Sorry, sorry."

Joyce sighed, reaching for her wine glass. "I'm not sure you'd be much different, Tom."

"Now that's not true." He moved to the salad. "I'd be happy just to outlast the  _ninth_."

Cully rolled her eyes, then looked back to her plate. It was almost like Gavin was there, Joyce felt, sitting at the end of the table. The conversation was about him, but dancing around anything important. It was a relief when her husband and daughter fell silent for a minute.

"Anything else, the rest of the weekend?" Barnaby finally said slowly.

Cully's knife hit the dish, clinking loudly. " _No_ , Dad—my monologue, remember?" Her face was pink again. "I don't think I have time for much else."

"I'm surprised you didn't work on it—"

"Do you want me to go through it with you, Cully?" Joyce asked, louder than she normally spoke. Much more of this and a row might erupt. She couldn't remember how many years had passed since that had last happened.

Cully breathed deeper, just beginning to smile. "Tomorrow, I think, if you could," she said, releasing it slowly. "I've got it all learned, I just need to keep reviewing it."

"I'd be glad to." Tom was the one to read lines and monologues with her most often, but not this time. His mind was focused elsewhere.

The rest of the meal passed tensely, even when the discussion focused entirely on Cully's upcoming audition and her monologue. Her answers were brief and clipped, and she stood up from the table just as she finished dinner—though her plate was only half-cleared—rather than lingering and talking as she usually did.

Tom vanished into the study only a moment after he set his knife and fork down. His eyes had flared, some connection finally revealing itself in the last moments of his meal, a possibility to test or a theory to explore. But the air remained stiff, laden with unspoken words.

Even while they washed up—Cully drying the dishes that Joyce scrubbed in hot soapy water—they did not speak. It was not like her daughter to be so quiet. Cully could choose her words carefully or simply say whatever came into her head, and sometimes it was impossible to know the calculated from the impulsive. The silence was more than abnormal, it was a warning. But of what...A small stack of plates and the cutlery remained to be cleaned when Joyce suggested Cully go to continue studying. It was easier to think without her.

Joyce had never asked what had happened before—a year ago, was it?—she had only  _seen_. Happy when she left, Cully had returned that evening in an ill temper, withdrawn, with nothing to say. Quiet, concerned questions only received brusque responses:  _"Nothing." "It's fine."_  Never anything more. In the weeks that followed until she departed for London, Cully suddenly failed to mention Gavin at all; and Tom, always deploring his sergeant's growing presence in their daughter's life, found himself without a word to fret over. Troy no longer said anything about her either, Tom had reported one night, a few weeks after Cully left for London, hadn't even asked where she was or what she was doing.

Rinsing the last forks and setting them in the draining board, Joyce let the water out of the sink, the pale bubbles dancing for a last moment before they vanished. Then, like today, she had asked nothing. But it had been clearer: Cully's anger was bared and raw that night, but now it was vague and muddled. Probably not even anger at all.

The dishes were dried and almost all returned to the cupboards and drawers when she heard her husband return. "That was lovely, Joyce," Barnaby said, kissing her cheek as he so often did. "I shall never doubt quail again."

"I think you should thank your daughter," Joyce said, putting away the final plate.

"I can't leave out my wife. You put together a marvelous salad."

"You're welcome, then." Closing the cupboard door, she turned back to him. "Did you figure something out? Find your contradiction?"

"Not quite." Her husband smiled for a second, but he was staring across the room. Thinking, surely, barely listening. "What time did Cully get in today?" he asked.

"A little before six, I think," Joyce said slowly.  _One sentence,_  she thought, tugging her shirt sleeves down,  _that's all._  Cully had said nothing about it after all, had not asked for her confidence.

"That was a long match."

Crossing her arms, she leaned against the counter. "I'm not the person you should be talking to, Tom," she said.

"Hmm?" He had hardly heard her.

"If you want to know, you should ask  _her_." He needn't say that he would not, but the answer would be evasive if he did.

"And I thought you didn't want me to worry."

"I don't." It might set his mind at ease, telling him. There was always value in knowing instead of speculating. The first put your feet on solid ground, the second left you dangling from a thread, wondering how far you had to fall. "I didn't say you shouldn't be interested." No, it wasn't her choice to make.

He was scowling, about to speak— "Tom."

Drawing a deep breath, he shook his head. "That's still what it is, Joyce."

"You don't know  _what_  it is." And perhaps it was for the best. She remembered perfectly how he reacted so long ago: shuddering, disbelieving.  _"No, oh it_ can't _be."_ Forgetting how stubborn Cully could be. "You can't know if you haven't asked."

"I do have eyes," he said. "And ears."

"I'm glad to hear it," Joyce said, touching his cheek. His skin was cool. "But you can't treat everything like an investigation."

He turned his face from her fingers. "I do not—"

"Because life isn't like that, Tom." She let her hand fall; there was never any point trying to comfort him when he was in this mood.

"It would be a lot simpler if it was."

"Probably," Joyce said. "I think you forget the entire world doesn't lie to you as a matter of course."

Tom looked at her again. "I  _do_  catch them when they do. There are advantages to a naturally suspicious mind."

"Sometimes. But Cully certainly evaded you for a while when she was a teenager."

The frown had returned, anger hiding behind it. "All the more reason—"

"Maybe then, not now." The memories were more than unpleasant, they were painful, even those of mere discussions years later as their daughter told them so casually things they had never known. Joyce still wished she hadn't learned about most of Cully's adolescent decisions, wild and foolish choices. She wrapped an arm around him, resting her hand lightly on his shoulder.

He stiffened beneath her touch. "Joyce—"

"See, you're worrying again."

"I'm not going to win, am I?" he asked, the frown slowly disappearing.

"You never do," she said, pulling her arm away.  _Don't,_  she decided. Cully was not a child needing guidance. "Go back to work. I'll make you a cup of tea."


	11. Chapter 10: The Road Already Traveled

**Chapter 10: The Road Already Traveled**

Cully never procrastinated when she had lines to memorize, and tonight she was particularly glad of the habit. The book was useless, the text a blur of letters that she looked at again and again, reading the same lines.  _'At last it was a good deal worried, and climbed a tree. I waited a good while, then gave it up and went home. Today the same thing over. I've got it up the tree again...I waited a good while, then gave it up and went home. Today the same thing over...then gave it up and went home...then gave it up and went home.'_  She snapped the pages shut. A waste of time.

How were things already so different, she wondered. A week ago, her only worry was the audition, this monologue. A few days ago, their conversation had been friendly and simple, if anxious. Yet now she could not see anything clearly. Opening the book, she began again, from the beginning. ' _I followed the other Experiment around, yesterday afternoon, at a distance, to see what it might be for, if I could. But I was not able to make it out. I think it is a man. I had never seen a man, but it looked like one, and I feel sure that that is what it is...I feel sure that that is what it is.'_

Though she was curled up in the chair in her bedroom, the book flooded by harsh light from the lamp to her right, her arms trembled against her legs. Gavin was just that, a man. Not a sergeant, a policeman, her father's partner: a  _man._  And that was the trouble. He was a man with all the usual flaws: impulses, desires, fears...

The memory still seethed occasionally, those last words playing back time after time, the disagreement that had descended into rage. He had been cold, his hands chilled, and motionless when she kissed him like she so often had—until he touched her shoulders, forcing her back. And when their voices had risen, their accusations melted together, an indistinguishable cacophony. They were all she remembered: bitter words and vile, burning anger.

_"What's wrong, Gavin? You have to tell me sometime—"_

_"I shouldn't have to!"_

_"How am I supposed to know—"_

_"If you don't want to—"_

_"What does that mean? I can't know if you don't speak to me for days on end."_

_"Did you expect me to do something else?"_

_"Yes!"_

_"What, then?"_

_"At least tell me."_

_"You don't see a damn thing, do you?"_

_"Gavin, I don't have to listen to this."_

_"Do you just ignore him, Cully?"_

_"What do—"_

_"Or does he not bother you about anything?"_

_"Are you worried about him?"_

_"Well, I can't ignore him anymore. It still matters._ Everything  _still matters!"_

_"But nothing's changed—"_

_"I know it hasn't—"_

_"Then why is my father so important, now? I think_ that's  _a bloody change!"_

_"Cully—"_

_"If he's not more important, stop acting like he_  is _!"_

_"That's not what I meant."_

_"What are you, afraid?"_

_He didn't answer._

_"Then_ be _afraid, Gavin! Go right ahead—"_

_"Cully—"_

_"I won't stop you."_

_"Can't you listen for—"_

_"Do whatever you want."_

_"That's not—"_

_"And don't lie to me—you'll just make a fool of yourself!"_

_"That's not it!"_

_"Yes, it is."_

_"No—"_

_"Leave me alone, if that's what you want!"_

_"I didn't say that."_

_"If you want to be afraid, fine. I don't have to be around to see it!"_

_"Cully, please don't—"_

_"If you're going to put all that ahead of me, there's no reason for me to stay! Don't even ask!"_

_"Cully, I can't—"_

_"Yes, you can—you_ won't _."_

_"You don't understand—"_

_"I do—"_

_"What do you want me to do?"_

_"Something I think you can't—"_

_"Do you think I wouldn't—"_

_"Oh, sod off, Gavin—to hell with you!"_

That night, he had pushed her away, refused to look at her when he first spoke, when he finally admitted the depth of his worry. When she thought about it again, he had looked almost terrified of—what?  _"Cully, I can't—"_

And that was it. Gavin's fear of her father—of betraying him, she supposed—had ruled him, and anger had seized her.  _"To hell with you!"_  she had shouted, meant every word, almost wanted to slap him. She had walked away without looking back, without worrying, without tears. She had found a small role in London, and almost forgotten about it all, about  _him_. She hadn't regretted it, only what she had wasted—

_Pay attention!_  Cully thought, blinking and returning to her lines. She set her chin in the palm of one hand, steadying her arm, holding the book open against her knee.  _'I realize that I feel more curiosity about it than about any of the other reptiles. If it is a reptile, and I suppose it is; for it has frowzy hair and blue eyes, and looks like a reptile.'_  She laughed hoarsely, reading that sentence again. Adam as a reptile rather than the first man!  _'It has no hips; it tapers like a carrot; when it stands, it spreads itself apart like a derrick; so I think it is a reptile, though it may be architecture.'_

"Truth will out," she said quietly, her eyes moving on. At the end, Gavin had been useless.  _'I was afraid of it at first, and started to run every time it turned around, for I thought it was going to chase me; but by and by I found it was only trying to get away...'_  Cully closed the book a second time. If she was honest, he was being sensible then, only trying to  _get away—_

_Stop._  She had to stop worrying about it, she had to keep working, if only for the distraction.  _'But by and by I found it was only trying to get away, so after that I was not timid any more, but tracked it along, several hours, about twenty yards behind, which made it nervous and unhappy. At last it was a good deal worried, and climbed a tree. I waited a good while, then gave it up and went home. Today the same thing over. I've got it up the tree again.'_

If there was another week till the audition, she would have chosen a new monologue. She could hardly stand this one any longer. Cully tossed the book aside; there was no use pretending.  _"To hell with you!"_  She regretted it  _now_ —she had for some time. Not immediately, not for weeks—a few months, even.

She hadn't tried to fool herself into believing she would never see him again. That was ridiculous. But she hadn't worried about it, hadn't considered it, hadn't  _thought_ about it until it happened.

* * *

She was upstairs unpacking yet another box when she heard Gavin's voice. "Oh, yes, it's beautiful," he said, the words faint as they drifted through the house. Her father's response was muddled, incomprehensible.  _To hell with you,_  Cully thought, the memory flaring.  _Still._  It was too soon to see him again, far too soon. Everything was still too fresh—and god only knew what words had been exchanged between him and her father.  _Only what he deserved._  Not that it mattered—he was  _there_  and she was  _here_.

Unwrapping the lamp in her hands, Cully frowned, setting it down heavily.  _What are you going to do, hide?_  That had to be worse, trying to avoid him like a frightened child. And it couldn't last forever. She forced her feet forward—through the door—down the hall—into the stairwell.

"I'll slap some paint on the walls, it'll be transformed in no time," she heard her father say as she reached the final step. They were straight ahead, both her parents standing just inside the kitchen. Her mother held something, a plant of some sort, she saw, as she walked through the sitting room. And, surely, he was with them.

"Hmm." Cully couldn't blame her mother for her doubts. Her father had never finished all the projects in the house they had just sold. Still outside the kitchen, she paused—there was time to turn around, return to the mountain of boxes, to run away...  _Don't think,_  she told herself.  _Just_ _get it over with._  Inhaling deeply, she tucked her hands into her overall's pockets.  _It's another performance,_  Cully told herself as she stepped into the room,  _that's all. You don't have to feel anything._

He was the same as ever, even looking away from her: his hair neatly combed, his jacket and trousers immaculate, nothing out of place. "Hello, Gavin," she said. "How are you?" The memory was gone, replaced by a sudden knot of nerves. Even as she shaped that new character—only his superior's daughter rather than a  _woman_  he had hurt—Cully didn't understand how her voice remained level, how the fury had vanished. It only needed to be hidden for a few minutes, not forgotten. She didn't  _want_  to forget it, not yet.

When Gavin turned, she wasn't sure what she expected to see: pain, anger...But he was merely surprised, searching for something to say as he leaned against the counter jutting out from the wall, not watching his hand land perilously close to a set of mugs and the cafetière. "Oh, fine," he said quickly, "thanks."

Bland, yet cheerful. How did he sound so pleasant and how did he still smile at her? Gavin was no actor, and a wretched liar as well. Maybe it was the sunlight—it streamed through the windows behind him, almost blinding her—that created the expression she thought she saw. Or perhaps her imagination...but why? Did he hope she still cared?

"He's given us this lovely cactus," her mother said as she walked across the kitchen, setting the ceramic pot beside the coffee cups.

_A cactus?_  Cully said to herself.  _That's an afterthought. Dad will probably murder it with too much attention._  Her parents were both enthusiastic gardeners—her father had embraced it long ago as a distraction from his work—but preferred plants requiring care.  _You can't be distracted by tending a cactus._

Her mother's face was strained. "Oh, it's...um, beautiful," Cully said after a moment, trying not to look at the bristling stems as she nodded, hoping she appeared grateful. Surely that was what her mother wanted. Gifts were not Gavin's forte, she decided.  _Like many things._  "Thank you very much."

"When did you come down?" he asked.

"Last night." No harm in saying that much, it was already done.

"She's getting us organized," her mother added.

" _Trying_  to." He was looking straight at her, and the next words tumbled out before she could snatch them back. "Do you fancy some coffee?"  _What are you doing?_  But coffee was nothing, meaningless.

"Oh, great." The smile was broader—tinged with relief?—and his shoulders loosened, his body just beginning to relax.

"Dad?" she asked, glancing to her father.  _Please say yes._  The mask was crumbling around the edges already.

"Uh, no, thanks," her father said, tugging his wallet from his pocket, examining the banknotes. "I am going to get some paint, and I'm going to drop off and see Auntie Alice on the way home."

_Nothing else for it,_  she thought, taking the first steps across the kitchen. It was something to do, though, something to look at. Gavin moved back from the counter for her to pass by, though he left hardly enough room. She had just taken her hands from her pockets, and her arm almost brushed his fingers before she reached for the coffee.

"My aunt," her father said, glancing to Gavin. It drew his attention away from her, for he was watching as she counted the spoonfuls of coffee, and her hand shook when she dropped the first into the coffee pot. "She's staying at that nursing home up near Aspern Tallow. She's been in hospital, poor old darling, and we need to keep an eye on her."

_Well, Mum's still here,_  she thought as her father walked into the sitting room. Gavin's gaze had drifted back so quickly—not to her hands, not to the spoon filled with coffee, but  _her_. It was too much to endure for long.

"As long as you  _don't_  forget the paint," her mother said, following him out of the room.

"I wouldn't dream of it."

Their footsteps and voices faded away—and Cully felt the nerves rise again, seizing her. The spoon knocked against the rim of the cafetière, almost deafening, and it fell from her fingers before she could set it beside the mugs.

"Are you all right, Cully?" Gavin asked, his hand reaching for her shoulder—and stopping before she had to draw back.

"Of course," she said lowly, switching on the electric kettle and replacing the lid on the jar. "Why wouldn't I be?"  _Leave me alone._

"I didn't mean that—"

She pushed the coffee aside, pressing her hand heavily against the counter, staring at her fingers.  _Can't you let well enough alone?_  "Then why did you ask?"

"I'm—"

"Don't bother answering."

The kettle had begun to gurgle in the quiet kitchen when her mother finally returned, and Cully poured the scalding water over the coffee. It darkened immediately—milk chocolate, then dark brown, nearly black—and the coarse grounds floated to the surface as she set the lid on top. "He'll be gone a while," her mother said. "You know how gets when he talks to Alice."

"How long will you be in town?" Gavin asked quietly. Almost timidly.

"About a week." She didn't want him to be afraid to speak to her—she wasn't sure what she wanted from him. Maybe an apology to start, more than merely  _"I'm sorry"_. Didn't she deserve that much?

"Or until things are almost put together," her mother added.

"Mum's afraid it will take a year or so."

Taking the milk jug from the refrigerator, her mother shook her head. "As long as it took him to finish things the last time, I think that's fair."

"Do you have much going on in London right now, Cully?" Gavin asked, a bit louder now.

"The same as usual."

"You've done a couple of adverts, Cully." Her mother set the milk jug beside the coffee pot, standing between them.  _Good._  "Those are new."

"They're only commercials, Mum, nothing much." The coffee finished, Cully slammed the plunger down, the pale brown foam floating to the top as her hand briefly touched the hot metal.

Gavin smiled weakly. "That's still something—"

"Not really," Cully said, pouring the coffee into three mugs. Her breathing was calmer and her hands were steadier, not a drop of the coffee splashing. "I haven't found another theater part, except just after I left."

He looked away—and Cully immediately wished she hadn't said anything. She didn't  _want_  to hurt him again and she didn't want to care. "Right. What play were you in?"

" _Much Ado,_ " she said, hearing her own disappointment. She always enjoyed Shakespeare, but it had been misery. The role, the production—everything. "Margaret. Not really worth it—"

"You can't expect the roles you've had here if you're in London, dear."

"I know, Mum."

Gavin picked up one of the mugs, pouring in a generous dollop of milk before passing the small pitcher to her mother. "But even a small role there—"

"It was a tiny theater, Gavin," Cully said, sliding the dish of sugar to him, ignoring the squeal of ceramic, not wanting to watch him drop one—two—three spoonfuls into his mug.  _Why does it matter to you?_  "It wasn't  _anything_."

"It was still something," he said. The way Gavin acted, they might have simply grown apart. Like that evening had never happened, like he still cared.  _But how_ can _he?_

* * *

Cully had still resented him as they stood around the counter, awkwardly drinking the coffee. Her mother had tried to fill in the silence, describing the various adverts, other auditions, what she termed a wonderful performance of  _Much Ado_ —even while no one responded. Cully had hardly spoken at all: she had nothing else to say to him.

To her relief, he had not lingered, instead escaping from the house with some butchered excuse. He would never be a good liar. The front door had only just closed when the wretched guilt began, the questions, the second-guessing, intensifying as each day came and went. The further that night slipped into the past, the more she loathed all of it, not just his fear. How had she shouted like she had, found such angry words, refused to listen to him even if she did not believe what he said? The certainty was gone, and a week or so later, she finally understood—it was  _forgiveness_ , as simple as that—the anger ebbing away, disappearing a little more every day. She didn't remember the moment when it vanished entirely.

All she had wanted was for their friendship to return, to talk freely on the occasions they met, perhaps to forget everything. Yet day after day, week after week, she had lost herself again. Not in the same madness, but the same confusion.  _What was it? What remained? Did_ anything _remain?_  Month after month, not hoping but _wondering_...at last asking the question that erased so much of the past. In that moment beside the rope course, it was all gone. She had never stood on that street, hating how quiet he was, not knowing he would push her away, how furious she would be. It was no longer an ever more distant memory: for all it mattered, it had never happened at all.

And here she was again, months of her life gone with a single kiss and thoroughly banished with a second.  _Will this ever end?_  she thought. The years she had spent with Nico had been so clear, even when romance had faded to friendship. But Gavin...If she closed her eyes, she still felt his lips touch hers, her limbs again numb. Happily mystified, willingly disoriented in a world that refused to cease spinning—  _Stop,_  she thought again, opening her eyes.  _Keep revising._

Cully didn't bother returning to the book; she knew it from the first word to the last.  _'If this reptile is a man, it isn't an IT, is it? That wouldn't be grammatical, would it? I think it would be HE. I think so. In that case one would parse it thus: nominative, HE; dative, HIM; possessive, HIS'N. Well, I will consider it a man and call it he until it turns out to be something else. This will be handier than having so many uncertainties.'_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The monologue Cully is studying is an excerpt from Eve's Diary, Complete, by Mark Twain. If you haven't read it, you should. It's hilarious.


	12. ACT II: Chapter 11: Distractions

**ACT II**

"To hope is to risk pain. To try is to risk failure, but risks must be taken, because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing."  
—Leo Buscaglia

**Chapter 11: Distractions**

No matter how bitter the station's coffee, Barnaby always took it in the same manner: black, no sugar. Most days it was tolerable, but some days it was like oil, thick and rank, as though it had been sitting on the hot plate for hours, which it usually had. This morning, it was well on its way to being not merely oil but  _crude_  oil. His cup had been rescued just in time.

The statements were strewn across his desk—rifled through and read yet  _again_ —for no reason. He could almost recite them all, even the final one offered by Ginny Sharp.  _Just in time,_  he thought, shuddering as he swallowed a mouthful of the dark brew, an unpalatable sheen glistening on its surface. Killed Sunday evening, discovered Monday morning, and as of this morning, Tuesday, they knew little more than her cause of death.

And then there was Lady Chetwood, murdered Monday afternoon. They had eliminated one suspect—Lord Chetwood—simply because of a mass of tourists. Not a damn bit of investigation, just the man's only good fortune in recent days. Everything was drying up, becoming stale.

"Good morning, sir."

Barnaby glanced up from his desk, the light voice unexpected. "Ah, morning, Audrey," he said. "I didn't know you were back today." Sergeant Brierley was always a pleasant person to see: newly promoted to detective sergeant, she was a woman bravely navigating what had until recently been a man's profession. And doing a hell of a job of it, too.

"Yes, sir," she said. Her face was tinted pink—probably from the sun—her blond hair even brighter, and she stood perfectly straight, invigorated by the time away. "Two weeks to the day."

"Good holiday?" Barnaby asked, shuffling the papers together, away from the mug. The smell alone might burn a hole through the pages.

"Of course. It's always nice to get a little time away from here."

"Indeed it is. There's a limit to how much human depravity one can endure." He shoved them into one of several manila files piled beside his pens. "Getting worse every day."

"Sir?"

Barnaby sighed, leaning back into his chair. Whenever he thought about Midsomer Market, his head almost throbbed. "They always seem to pile up. Our Midsomer murderers never know when to stop."

"That bad?" she asked, crossing her arms.

_Might as well,_  he thought. A fresh set of ears often recognized something in even the most basic facts, or asked a new question to which familiarity blinded those assigned to a case. "We're already at three. Two bashed about the head—one of them drowned after that—and one pushed off a roof." The possibility would haunt him for some time: what could they have done to prevent Ginny Sharp's death? Was she murdered for speaking to them, for seeing something, for hearing something? Or for a reason known only to the murderer? "And," he continued, "with all three belonging to the same small group, there might be more coming. Only five—three murdered, another one intimidated, however subtly..."

Marjorie Empson, Ginny Sharp, Lady Chetwood, Tamsin Proctor, all targeted in some way. Four of the five, which left only Sondra Bradshaw untouched.  _Well, that's something to start with,_  he thought. Coincidences were never entered into the files or presented in court, but they were the genesis of many a final conclusion.

"What group, sir?"

"A reading club," Barnaby said, laughing quietly. " _The_  Reading Club. Seems the only thing they were reading was the investment page."

"Is that their only connection?" Sergeant Brierley asked.

"The only unique one I can see," he said, standing and taking his suit coat from the back of his chair. The pounding in his head had not quite appeared today, and maybe it wouldn't. There was at least one person with answers. Even if he could not speak to the particulars of the Reading Club, Harry Painter probably knew enough to sort out what the hell to  _make_  of the shares. "Unless they all have secrets we still haven't found."

"Sir—"

"I've only got a moment, Audrey," he said, pulling on the coat.

"I'm just wondering, sir—" She paused, looking around for a moment—directly at Troy, then to him again. "Is something troubling Gavin?" she asked quietly, almost whispering. He barely heard her.

Barnaby shrugged his shoulders, ignoring the possibilities lurking at the edge of his mind. At his desk in the center of the squad room, the man's face was down, his gaze fixed on a neat stack of papers. "Nothing I know of."  _Plenty, I think._  Troy twisted his wrist, looking at his watch, his pen tapping sharply against his desk. _Impatience? Anticipation? Nervousness?_

"He's hardly said a word to me all morning."

"A welcome change, isn't it?" Barnaby asked. Sergeant Brierley smiled, exhaling loudly. Relieved, Barnaby knew. During her first few years as a WPC in Causton CID, Troy had lavished more than a polite amount of attention on her. Even now, he occasionally crossed that boundary—but perhaps not  _now_.

"Yes, but he didn't answer when I just said 'hello'."

"He might be focused on his work for once," he said, stopping to glance at Sondra Bradshaw's statement one last time.  _That'll be the day._  He had heeded his wife's words and asked Troy nothing yesterday, neither a question about the match nor about Cully. And it might be better not to, for if he remained uncertain, he could not eliminate  _either_  possibility.

"It's not like him, sir," she said, her arms falling back to her sides. "Sometimes, I can't get him to stop talking to me long enough so I can answer my phone."

"Things can change when you're on holiday, sergeant." He slipped the statements back into the proper folder. "Even if you don't expect them to."  _Particularly when you don't expect them to,_  he thought. At times, Barnaby wondered if they believed him blind: Troy, Cully, his wife, all of them. His sergeant's garbled confusion, his daughter's near silence after conversation turned to Troy, his wife's refusal to see things as they were for god only knew what reason...And, really, what else had changed?  _"Ran into Cully last night, sir." "I met Gavin for a cup of tea."_  Nothing else: it all sprang from  _that_.

"Aren't you the first to say no one ever does anything out of character?" Sergeant Brierley asked, drawing him back to CID. She was almost amused.

"Quite right," Barnaby said, stepping around his desk. "But I think you'll have to ponder it on your own." He had already wasted enough time this morning without running through an impending disaster yet again. Even without anyone's cooperation, he could call it that. "Troy!"

"Yes, sir?" he asked, looking up from his forms, across the squad room.

"Worry about that later," Barnaby said. The man didn't glance at Sergeant Brierley.  _That's certainly a change_ , he thought. "We are heading back to Midsomer Market."

Troy stood, shuffling the pages together, dropping his pen into an already filled cup on his desk. Putting on his coat—like nearly all of the non-uniformed men in the station, Barnaby as well, he often shed it during the day—his eyes were on the clock across the room.

"Something bothering you?" Barnaby asked, now wondering what the time was himself as he stood by Troy's desk. Sergeant Brierley had followed him, though why...

"No—"

" _Good morning_ , Gavin," Sergeant Brierley said, almost grinning. It  _was_  rather funny, seeing Troy's skin redden for a moment; the man could be easily flustered, particularly by his own mistakes.

"Hello—Audrey," Troy said, tugging down the ends of his sleeves. "Are you back early?"

Barnaby chuckled quietly. "That's what I said."

"No," she said, rolling her eyes, "I was on holiday the full two weeks."

"Oh, right." And again, Troy's gaze moved to his watch.

"If you keep looking at your watch," Barnaby said, narrowing his eyes at that simple irritating, repetitious motion, "it's going to fly off your wrist."

Troy scowled at Barnaby, though it faded as he turned to Sergeant Brierley again. "Where did you go?"

"Blackpool. I think I got a little too much sun," she said, pushing a lock of hair away from her pink face—almost burnt—with an equally pink hand.

"That is the danger of trying to enjoy the seaside," Barnaby added, waiting for...nothing. The silence from Troy was surprising, for teasing—and occasionally even harassing—Sergeant Brierley had long been one of his preferred pastimes.  _No one ever acts out of character,_  he reminded himself.  _If they do, it's either character_ changing  _or a lie._  And after more than five years partnered with Troy—it was impossible to tell. But if it was change...Barnaby almost shivered.  _Why else?_  "I think we'll have to leave you now, Audrey."

"Of course," she said. "Just wanted to make sure no one had forgotten about me."

"I doubt that would ever happen," Barnaby said as the woman smiled one last time before walking away. And again, Troy paid her no attention. "I'm impressed."

"Uh, about what, sir?" he asked, shaking his head—like he was interrupted.  _Why?_

"You've ignored Audrey all morning. I thought I'd never see that day." His sergeant opened his mouth, ready to speak, but Barnaby went on. He neither wanted nor needed to hear anything the man meant to say  _now_. "Midsomer Market, Troy. It's time for us to settle these shares."

"Fine." The word was clipped, almost irritated.

" _What_  is wrong?"

"Nothing. I just hope you know something about the stock market I don't, sir," Troy said, checking his watch again.

_What_ is  _it?_  Barnaby thought. There was no use in asking; he wouldn't receive a straight answer. "Only what it feels like to lose money," he said darkly, wishing once more he'd never seen that paper.

"I don't need the stock market for that, sir."

"Nor do I," Barnaby continued as they left the squad room, walking into the hall. It overflowed with people: uniformed officers carrying statements and complaints, plainclothes detectives returning from or preparing for interviews. Navigating the corridor was the perennial challenge—at least during the day—dodging bodies crowned with focused faces and eyes too occupied to observe the madness before them, trying distinguish thoughts from mere noise until the door at the far end swung open to freedom. "But, I believe we  _do_  know someone in Midsomer Market who has some idea— _how_  to decipher this." His last words were lower, no longer battling with a dozen other voices. "One currency trader turned pool man."

"Harry Painter?" Troy asked as the mass of police officers and their chatter faded away.

"You have a better idea, Troy?" His sergeant didn't answer. "And it's time we had another conversation with Dr. Bradshaw. Or both of them, if we can manage it."

Barnaby was silent as they left the building, entering the car park. What were they to make of Sondra Bradshaw and her fortunate escape from the murderer's schemes? Coincidence—mere chance—or something more? God, how had he  _missed_  that possibility until now? She claimed near ignorance of the Reading Club's net worth when she should have been keenly aware of it, and had cautiously offered a figure, like she knew very little.  _"All the paperwork is at Marjorie's."_  Like she gave them all the information she possessed. Yet yesterday, she had told Troy,  _"Marjorie was in charge of the admin, I just—did the sums."_  A contradiction hid there, if a small one: doing the sums, seeing all the details, yet pretending she knew only as much as the others who regarded the stock market as a foreign language.

"Do you think he knows more than he's telling, sir?" Troy asked when they reached the car, all the doors opening with a click of the remote on his keyring.

"At the very least about  _Maureen_  Carter, I suspect," Barnaby said, narrowing his eyes at the man. He didn't know what he expected: a flinch, a breaking of eye contact, a scowl...But there was  _nothing_  in response, except perhaps a little impatience. And another look at his watch. "What is on your mind, Troy?"

_There_  was the change; Troy looked away, and Barnaby heard the keys rattling in his hand. "Nothing much, sir," Troy said. "I'm just wondering how Cully's audition is going."

"What audition?" What was it? There was something just below the surface, something he should remember.  _The monologue..._

"For the playhouse," Troy added. "I think she said it was supposed to start about now."

_It is the right time,_  Barnaby thought, opening the door and sinking into the passenger seat. Another thing that had slipped his mind. "Very well, I expect. I'm sure there won't be any news for at least a of couple days." He almost slammed the door as Troy sat and turned the key in the ignition.  _Troy_  had remembered and  _he_  had forgotten. He frowned as the car jerked forward, his seat belt tightening across his chest. It was meant to be the other way around.

" _Pygmalion_ , isn't it?"

"Dr. and Mrs. Bradshaw, Troy," Barnaby said, clenching his fingers on the door, "let's just worry about the  _Bradshaws_."

"Right." Troy glanced out his window, then turned with a screech of the tires, almost slamming into a car in the far lane.

After the car's horn stopped echoing in his ears, Barnaby began to breathe again. "It's a miracle you haven't killed us yet. Have you looked into the driving course?"

"No, sir." Troy's knuckles were white on the steering wheel. "I haven't had the time."

_Haven't had the time,_  Barnaby repeated to himself. And there would never  _be_  any time for it at this rate. Precisely one week on, and it was impossible to determine who was worse off: his daughter—unwilling to do much more than admit she had met Troy for whatever reason—or his sergeant—his tongue more awkward than ever and distracted by goings-on that, in the end, had nothing to do with him.  _Or shouldn't._

Each of them belonged in a different part of his life: Cully was his daughter, Troy was his sergeant. His job and his family were destined never to intersect. Cully and Troy had both ignored that distinction before, and what had it been? An utter catastrophe. He still remembered her eyes the next morning, empty and furious, her voice both flat and quivering as she sat at the kitchen table drinking her tea. But Troy...a few moments of uncomfortable silence after questions he preferred not to answer, the empty space filled with a meaningless string of comments about crime scene and forensic reports. Not really a surprise at all that Troy wanted to say nothing now.

Sometimes, Barnaby wondered if he should feel any guilt at all, because he didn't. He never had, not even when he had seen his daughter that morning. It was the inevitable consequence of experiencing no regret. And in the end, the whole mess was confined to three or so months, from that play and his wife's amusement to his daughter's anger and Troy's refusal to say anything about it. At least if he forgot the even briefer madness at the rope course that neither Troy nor Cully had openly discussed.

Maybe it was better to hear nothing directly about it, for the thought alone left him feeling slightly ill. But the present, the suffocating stillness was no better—worse, really. It couldn't be avoided.  _Again._  "Troy," Barnaby said, clearing his throat, "about Cully—"

"What about her, sir?" Troy said crisply. His face still revealed nothing.

"God, use your head! Do you need me to go through all that—"

"No, sir, I don't." Troy looked at the rear-view mirror, though not over his left shoulder, as he changed lanes. "Why do you want to talk to Dr. Bradshaw?"

Barnaby's hand tightened further on the door handle, all four of the car's wheels somehow remaining in contact with the tarmac. If that was the only miracle today, he would be grateful. He was not religious enough to hope for any more. "So you'll remember what I said then—"

"What's so important about Dr. Bradshaw?"

He drew a deep breath when the car lurched forward.  _Then later,_  he thought. The words could not remain unsaid forever. "Dr. Bradshaw...He  _is_  the village doctor," he said. "He knew more than we thought about Ginny Sharp. And who knows what else."

"Surely you don't think he's involved, sir," Troy said, leaning forward to see around a hedge as the car came to a sudden stop.

"Why not?"

Troy shrugged his shoulders, finally depressing the accelerator roughly. "Well, he's the village doctor—"

"So you've already forgotten Dr. Shipman?"

"Who?" Troy asked, after a moment.

He  _didn't_  remember. "Dr. Harold Shipman, up north, in Hyde," Barnaby said, closing his eyes. The doctor's picture had headlined newspapers for weeks: a balding middle-aged man with a grey beard, dull glasses on his nose, vacant and heartless eyes staring through the lenses. Plain and entirely unremarkable, as they so often managed to be.

"Hang on—"

"Yes, GP and serial murderer. Convicted of fifteen a couple years back, but they're certain he's responsible for over two hundred fifty deaths."

Troy whistled lowly as he twisted the steering wheel. "That'll make you think twice about calling for an appointment."

"Not that I'm expecting Dr. Bradshaw is involved," Barnaby said. The possibility remained, but it didn't fit. "I think our case is more straightforward."

"That's a first."

"Yes." The time was nagging at him as well, now, his daughter's audition suddenly in the front of his mind. And  _Troy_ , whose head was sometimes worse than a sieve, had remembered it, not  _him_! "But it's always the same, these villages. It's like an unwritten agreement."

"How do you mean, sir?"

"You said it yourself: never the truth the first time around from anyone." Barnaby drummed his fingers on the door, the trees alongside the road blurring into a mass of green and brown, leaves indistinct, branches and trunks muddled, almost invisible. He would have to ask Cully about the audition tonight, if he didn't forget again. "We never get a clear answer or the whole truth. Everyone has something to hide."


	13. Chapter 12: Acceleration

**Chapter 12: Acceleration**

The director's call came earlier than Cully expected. In spite of the scheduled opening—just over a month away—she had thought she would hear nothing until the following week, not late Friday morning. But, he had called and he had said that name— _Eliza—_ and all the worry had been swept away. Of course she would remain in Causton, there was no reason to leave— She drew a quick breath, trying to ignore the end of that sentence. Causton meant nothing at all, did it?

The thoughts were more and more troubling: not because they were ridiculous or impractical—though they were—but because of how frequent they had become, and how quickly. When she had spoken to him so briefly last night, his words had enveloped her, warm and almost comforting. The world outside had ceased to exist, returning only when he vanished, and then it had been empty.  _"I missed you, Gavin."_  And it was true now, too, even in those moments when she knew there was no other choice.

Hardly recognizing the motions—opening her mobile phone and navigating to the contacts list—Cully paused, her thumb on the  _send_  button. There was nothing wrong with it, after all, she had promised to tell him as soon as she knew. But this was more than merely keeping a promise, calling him now...Not wanting to think any more, she pressed  _send_ ; the struggle to think was too much.

Once it began, the ringing never ended—one, two, three, four, five times—until the voice mail answered at last. Not surprising, only disappointing. "Detective Sergeant Troy, and I cannot take your phone call. Leave your name, number, and a message, and I'll return your call as soon as possible." The harsh electronic beep was shrill in her ear.

"Hi, Gavin," she said, "it's Cully. Sorry I couldn't get you when you're free." She stopped for a moment. There was no point in saying everything now, not if she wanted him to call her back. "When you get a minute, just give me a ring." Pressing the  _end_  button on the phone, Cully sighed. If she was honest, that  _was_  what she wanted, for Gavin to call her back. Telling him was almost secondary.

She had called him Tuesday evening after her father arrived home, feeling certain Gavin would be home as well, or at least able to answer. She was half correct—he  _did_ answer after only two rings—but he still sat behind his desk at CID, signing and dating statements. "Typical," he had muttered. Though she had only wanted, almost _needed_ , to tell him about the audition, the conversation had swiftly turned away from that, to nothing in particular. Anything and everything. The murder in Midsomer Market had been foremost on his mind: pity for Lord Chetwood, disbelief about that woman's delusions, and—at first—a touch of pride.

_"Your dad doesn't tell me 'good work' too much, Cully," he said._

_"Then I'm sure you deserved it," she answered. He jumped to conclusions often—her father complained Gavin would make a career of it—but he usually found the right one, now more than ever. She wondered if he was smiling, still enjoying the praise. "He does give credit where it's due."_

_"He spends most of his time telling me why I'm wrong."_

_"About everything?"_

_Gavin laughed, though the sound was not entirely cheerful. "Almost."_

His voice had become familiar again so quickly, almost an indulgence she eagerly anticipated each day. She had not seen him since Saturday—with revising, investigations, volunteering, and overtime, there  _was_  no time—but even a few words softened the frustration. And when he did not answer his phone, the disappointment was painfully deep. Not that it was his fault. Wednesday, her father had not returned until gone ten, too tired to do much more than sip a large whiskey and gaze blankly across the room, already lost in thought. She had called twice that night, and Gavin never answered. When she reached him on Thursday, he had sounded so exhausted she couldn't ask him to stay on the line. It wasn't loneliness that had overcome her a few moments later, just the confusion.

Footsteps broke into her thoughts, a pair of older women climbing the steps into the library unit. Setting the phone on her seat, Cully stood. "Hello," she said, walking forward to take the small stacks of books each held. At least for the moment, she could think about something else.

More people came and went: some returning books, others borrowing, some ready to chat, others simply wanting to browse. Whenever she had a moment alone, Cully sat beside her phone, once or twice staring at it, demanding it to ring.

It never did.

"You're being silly," she said quietly, forcing her eyes out the front window, the village green and grey road meeting just to her right. Bright and beautiful...and for a moment Cully loathed it and its cheerfulness. "He'll call you when he gets a chance." She was sure of it—but, god, what was taking so long? "What is the matter with you?"

_Do something_. Her leg was twitching impatiently, her fingers tapping, all waiting for—nothing. Picking up her phone again, she paused for a final moment, wanting and hoping, and receiving only silence as her reward. Sighing, she dialed the home number and this time, the phone only rang twice before it was answered. "Hello?"

"Hi, Mum?"

"Oh, Cully, how are you?" her mother asked.

"Fine," she said. "Great, actually. I have good news."

"Already?"

Cully heard the excitement, and her own rose again. "They're running a tight schedule this time," she said.

"And?"

"I got the female lead—Eliza."

"That's wonderful, darling!" her mother said.

Cully still wondered how it happened. Just after leaving the stage, everything that had gone wrong had replayed in her mind: one missed word, stress where she did not want it, a gesture she hated. Gavin had almost laughed all them off as he took a few moments away from his paperwork Tuesday evening. "You're worrying too much," he had said as she recited the list that had grown longer throughout the day, and nothing she could say was able to silence him. And what would he have done if she had told him face to face?

"Cully?"

"Oh, sorry." She shook her head, trying to listen. What was the point of calling if she didn't? "I've worked with the director before:  _The Importance of Being Earnest_ , _Noises Off_..."

"When do you begin rehearsing?"

"The start of next week," Cully said, hearing the director's words again. The schedule was certain to be mad, trying to finish so much so soon.

"Have you told your father yet?"

"No, I rang Gavin about an hour ago, but his mobile was off."  _First_. Neither her mother nor her father, but Gavin. It was not driven by thought or choice, merely action, like it was...right.

"Oh?" Was she going to ask something else, Cully wondered, new nerves growing in her chest.  _Please don't._  "I'm certain he'll be happy to hear it."

"I know." What else would he be, after Saturday. If she closed her eyes, held her breath, pushed aside all her thoughts, she still felt the gentle warmth that had vanished too quickly. She could hear his quiet words again— _"_ _I'll—just hope it goes well, then."_ —when his own worry had disappeared entirely.

A pair of voices broke through the silence, then footsteps—and she was in the library unit again, her phone still pressed to her ear, just wishing. "Sorry, Mum—"

Her mother laughed quietly. "Work to do?"

"Finally. I'll tell you more about it when I get home."

"I'll see you this evening, then."

"Bye," Cully said, closing her phone as she stood, finding a smile as she reached out for the books being returned. The question did not retreat:  _how long?_

* * *

Cully had almost stopped thinking about him when her phone rang again; the hours had moved slightly quicker when she had work to focus on. Well, it was hardly  _work_ , but it was something. The last library patrons had vanished several minutes before, the last books had been checked and shelved, and, sitting in the driver's seat staring out the window, Cully answered without looking at the number. "Hello?"

"Cully?"

"Gavin." The heat returned, seeping through her chest and her arms, to the tips of her fingers. Her mouth was suddenly dry. "How are you?"

"All right," he said, the words as heavy as they had been the night before.

She frowned, crossing her free arm over her stomach. "You don't sound like you are."

"No, just spent most of the day in the car, I think." Now, Cully only heard the tangled noise of CID—mumbled words, shrill phones, footsteps—and she wondered if he was looking for her father, to be certain he wasn't there, before saying anything else. "But—what about you?"

"I—I'm good," she said, her voice shaking for a moment. Even through the hours of waiting, she had not expected to be so happy to hear him speak; it overwhelmed everything else.

"I'd've called earlier, but we only got a break just now."

Cully's eyes narrowed as a woman clutching a toddler's hand wandered across the green. A handbag dangled from her elbow, nearly brushing the ground, and she carried nothing else. "The first all day?"

"Of course," Gavin said lowly. "But it's a nice change of pace, burglaries instead of murder."

Shaking the child's arm, the woman turned back, ignoring the beginnings of a tantrum, and Cully released a deep breath. "The victims probably don't think so."

"They ought to see what we usually investigate." The cacophony rose again before he continued. "What did you want to talk about?"

The pair had vanished, and Cully shook her head. A few more minutes to talk. "Oh—I had a call from the director at the Playhouse this morning."

"And?"

"Rehearsal starts next week."

Gavin laughed briefly. "What part were you cast in? His housekeeper?"

"No—" She sat straighter.  _How do_ you _know?_  she thought. "Whose housekeeper?"

Gavin didn't speak for a moment, but he cleared his throat; Cully winced at the sound. "Dr.— Professor—you know... _his_  housekeeper."

"I thought you didn't know anything about drama."

"I still don't," he said. "I just thought I'd take a little time, you know, to read it again."

Thoughts raced around her mind, devouring one another before she could comprehend them. "Really?"

"If it's all you're going to be working on for a while—" He stopped, nearly sounding embarrassed. Or perhaps just uncertain.

_Don't, Gavin._ "It will be," she said. "The schedule's mad."

"It's a strange thing to write a play about," he said, "accents and all that."

Cully relaxed, leaning against the seat back. "That's not what it's about, Gavin."

"Then what is it about?"

"People."

He groaned, and she could see the frown of frustration, the unasked question:  _why bother?_  "There's a reason I didn't study drama."

"Or literature, apparently." Cully looked over her shoulder—but there was no one. The chatter on Gavin's end of the line was so close, she thought it was someone behind her.  _Good._

"I never had to," he said.

"What did you think about it this time?"

"I'm—only halfway through, Cully."

"Then you've already run into me." She had almost asked the director to repeat himself. A lead role—and she needn't leave to take it. Even the role of Clara would be worth that: she wanted to stay in Causton more than— Cully shuddered. How had this happened so quickly?

"That big a part?" Just like her mother, she heard the anticipation in his voice.

"Eliza." Cully tapped her fingers on the edge of her phone.  _Should I?_  It was only a question, for god's sake. What harm was there in that? Only the risk of hearing  _no_ —and that was hardly a worry. "I can tell you all about it later tonight."

"Tonight—" There was the noise again, briefly clear and then muffled, like he had pulled the phone from his ear or pressed his hand over the microphone.  _A policeman's job never stops,_  she thought. "Sorry," he said after a few seconds, the chaos fading away.

"Well? Tonight?"

Gavin was silent, and when he did speak, he was quieter than before. "Is that an invitation?"

Whatever was behind those words...it was a mystery. Happiness? Wariness? "It could be."

"Even if I haven't finished it?"

_Really, Gavin?_  Cully thought as she stood. Her legs were beginning to twitch, and even a few steps from the front to the back of the library unit began to release the nerves.  _You_  are _useless, sometimes._  "I'll wait, if you'd like."

"No, no," he said, almost stumbling over the simple words, "I wouldn't complain."

Cully wondered if he heard her smile, if he saw the pink flush spreading across her cheeks. "Good, you can pick me up at the library."

"Should I worry about bringing my copy of it?"

"If you want to ruin dinner," she said, sitting in the driver's seat again, her legs finally still.

"Tonight?"

"And I'm not asking you to sit at the same table as Dad," she added quickly.

"Did I sound worried?" he asked.

Cully smiled to herself, seeing his face tense, his skin blanch further—somehow, it  _was_  possible—and his gaze transform from pleased to worried. "You didn't have to."

She saw the scowl and watched it fade just as quickly. "Well, when should I be at the library?" he asked.

"I'm supposed to be finished around five."

"We might be done by then," Gavin said, the exhaustion returning to his voice.

"I didn't think burglary investigations took so much time," she said, looking at the clock on the dashboard, the glowing numbers declaring it was only mid-afternoon.

"They do when there are four in two days."

" _Four_!" She wasn't sure she had heard him correctly. "Is that even possible?"

"Didn't your dad tell you?"

"No, he's been too tired to do much of anything."

"Two Tuesday night, two more yesterday evening," he said. "The same marks on the windows at all of them, and they match some from a spree a few months back. The beginning of another—"

He was silent, and the bedlam rang in her ears again: the telephones, the footsteps, the shouting of names. Now frowning herself, Cully turned to the back of the library unit—it was still empty, the shelves of books sitting patiently, waiting for a moment's attention.

"Sorry," he said after a moment. And it was not mere politeness; she heard the annoyance. But it couldn't be helped.

"No, it's fine," she said, standing once more for a better look across the village green. No one approached. "Just—call me when you do finish."

"Sure. I'll see you later, Cully."

"Yeah."

As she hung up, the world was already reappearing, flat and faded, almost dreary in spite of the clear sky and brilliant sun. Grey, uninteresting, and empty. The morning's excitement and happiness were not gone but dulled, hidden beneath the quiet.  _It's only a few hours,_  she thought.  _That's hardly anything. And why does it matter—_

But that was a lie, wasn't it? Cully had known his half of the answer for months, and the past few days revealed one thing: it had not changed. And now her own half was clear—she had seen it, heard it, felt it. She had no name for that solution, no certainty of the components, almost no understanding of how one yielded the other. Two answers to the same confusion, each incomplete without the other, forming only one conclusion. Whatever it meant in the end.

_What end?_  Cully thought.  _It's too much worrying about_ now.  _You don't even know what Gavin wants—_  Well, that was hardly the truth. His eyes, his touch, his voice, his kiss, everything she had returned...She would be a fool to claim she didn't know, for the only unknown was herself.

The remaining afternoon hours blurred together, sometimes rushing, sometimes crawling. More men and women—even the occasional child—entered and exited, their words and footsteps breaking into the thoughts already consuming her. Each half answered with no end in sight. Each time a question was asked or a book had to be shelved, the new world spinning in her head dissipated...and rose again almost stronger than before, cleaner, more vibrant.

And, as fervently as she anticipated the day's end, Cully was loath to think about what had to be done, not after what she had already said.  _"I'll tell you more about it when I get home."_  But, really, were those words any more than pleasantries, the thoughtless words that began and ended the simplest of conversations?

Sighing, Cully opened her phone again, dialed the home number again, heard the sharp rings again—and too soon, heard her mother again.

"Hello?"

She drew a deep breath. "Hi, Mum?"

"Cully?" her mother asked, sounding almost curious.

"I just wanted to tell you..."  _God, you're not a child._  "I actually don't know when I'll be home tonight."

"Is anything wrong?" It was a different voice now, concerned rather than inquisitive.

"No," Cully said, shaking her head as though her mother could see her, "something's come up, that's all."

"Oh?"

Cully's eyes narrowed. At times, she was certain her parents were cut from the same cloth, never willing to reveal everything they either knew or suspected until the time was perfect. "I won't be too late."

"Have you gotten a hold of your father?"

"Not yet," Cully said, nervously twisting her fingers in the hem of her jumper. After being unable to reach Gavin, she hadn't bothered. After finally speaking with Gavin, the thoughts about questions and answers had driven everything else aside.

"I can tell him when he gets home." Her mother was quiet—almost gentle—and Cully again wondered what she was thinking.

"Thanks, Mum."

"What did Gavin say?" her mother asked after a moment.

She knew, and Cully had expected nothing else. "He was happy to hear it. He's started rereading it." Cully heard his laughter and his tentative admission about reading _Pygmalion_  again, saw his skin redden before it quickly became pale once more.

"Really?"

That single word drew Cully back to the phone, Gavin's face and voice disappearing. "I might ask him to help me read my lines," she said.

"Not tonight, surely."

"No—"  _Tonight_. Yes, she knew. "Early next week, I suppose. If he and Dad aren't still too busy."

"Those burglaries are all your father has been thinking about."

"I know," Cully said. Her father never stopped working, except for the occasional holiday—and sometimes not even then! "But that's Dad."

"That's his job, dear."

How many hours had she spent with Gavin in the past week and a half, and for how long had they talked over the phone? Cully didn't know, but not even a minute felt stolen from any investigation. Like that time was set aside for her— _only_  her. "I think Gavin will make some time."


	14. Chapter 13: One Way?

**Chapter 13: One Way?**

Standing by the ironing board with a shrinking pile of towels—she had returned the iron to the cupboard after pressing a handful of napkins that had been mixed in—the day's conversations with Cully were still on Joyce's mind as she folded and stacked the linens. Her daughter had taken the time to call, quite soon after hearing the news, yet the first call had been to neither her nor Tom, but to Gavin. And it was hardly a surprise, though Cully had said nothing more about it and Joyce had not inquired further.

Yet it was so very different. They had always been the first to know about roles and auditions, except in the years when she had dated Nico. Then, it was only to be expected, and...well, perhaps it wasn't so  _unexpected_  now either.

Across the house, the front door opened and was nearly slammed shut. That was never a good indication about her husband's workday. "Hello, Joyce?" His voice echoed through the house and his footsteps wound through the sitting room, following the path he took nearly every day.

"I'm in the kitchen," Joyce called, folding another towel. The stack was almost finished, and it was just as well, for it was nearly six thirty—time to start dinner. Reaching for one more, she looked up as her husband entered the kitchen. "Hello, dear. Good day?"

He released a sigh, shaking his head as he did. "Better than some."

Dropping the towel in her hands, Joyce frowned. "You don't sound certain."

"Oh, it  _was_  better, just not the way I'd prefer."

Ignoring the final cloths, Joyce walked away from the ironing board to her husband. His face was as tired as it had been the entire week, the case already beginning to wear away at him. "What happened?"

Glancing at the morning paper on the counter, he shuddered. The burglaries had not headlined the  _Causton Echo_ , but they claimed much of the remaining front page. "Whoever is dashing all over the county with his hammer and screwdriver, he's giving us the runaround."

Joyce set a hand on his shoulder, the muscles tight beneath her fingers. "It's still that bad, eh?"

"The forensic report came back today," he said, pushing the newspaper away. "A screwdriver or an ice pick, they said—the marks on the sills are identical at each scene." He crossed his arms, turning toward her and away from her touch. "And they match marks left at the scenes of five other burglaries a few months back. Well, we already knew they would, but at least now we can prove it."

"Nine burglaries?" Joyce asked, letting her arm fall.

"Yes. And he's left a few prints—we'll get him with those. But it's always out in the villages, where people think they're safe." He smiled slightly, though it was still an unhappy expression. "Aren't you glad we stayed in Causton?"

"I was then," she said. He had never quite let her forget that, still teasing her occasionally. "If we're ever going to leave Causton, I think we'd have to leave Midsomer."

"That might be safer."

"Oh, Cully rang earlier this afternoon," Joyce added, returning to the ironing board and the last of the laundry. Best to just be done with it.

"What about?"

"She's already heard from the Playhouse."

Tom seemed puzzled as she looked at him again, as though he was trying to remember what Cully had said. The investigation had displaced everything, to the point that he had forgotten her audition; it had never happened before. "Didn't she say they wouldn't call until next week?"

"That's what she thought. She said it's a tight schedule."

Another smile crept across his face, entirely pleased this time. "Well?"

"She's playing Eliza."

"Oh, very good!" he exclaimed, sounding like he had finally forgotten the case, even if only for a moment. "That's a reason to celebrate." His eyes were bright, and he didn't have to say it. Joyce knew he was already anticipating dinner out; his enthusiasm for restaurant meals had long since ceased to trouble her. "Is she back yet?"

"No," Joyce said, folding the final towel, "she's not sure when she'll be home."

"Really?"

Joyce heard the uncertainty—but already, his face showed comprehension. "That's all she said."

"It would be," he said quietly, looking down for a moment to collect his thoughts and parse his words. "Did she say what  _Troy_  thinks?"

"He was happy for her."

"I'd hope so. It was a hell of a time keeping his mind on track, Tuesday."

Joyce nearly smiled, holding it back only for her husband's sake. "He was that worried?" she asked softly. And that was hardly unexpected, either. Some day, he would know about that afternoon—almost a week ago, wasn't it?—but not now. He did not want to hear it, and she was still not the one to say it.

"Yes, Joyce, he  _was_." His face twisted in a scowl. "So—she'll be out all evening?"

"I don't know. I didn't ask." Tom shuddered, and Joyce wondered how much he had deduced. Most other fathers would guess, but he would think, connect, analyze—and _know_. "Why is it bothering you, Tom?"

"Why?" he snapped, shoving his hands in his pockets. " _Why?_ "

"Yes, why?" Joyce added quickly.

"Joyce, he's—he's my sergeant." The exhaustion had overwhelmed him and now it was erasing any chance of discussion. "That's reason enough."

She supposed he forgot sometimes, though now he might just be ignoring the memory. "I think I remember another young woman whose parents weren't fond of a policeman."

"Joyce—"

"Maybe that's why she and the policeman were married in a registry office," she continued. Not that that was the end of this—for several months they had been certain Cully would marry Nico, and nothing had come of it—but if he could just remember...

His hands were out of his pockets, set across his chest, almost defensively. "But after they got to know him better—"

"Hmm."

"It is  _not_  the same thing."

Joyce lifted an eyebrow. "Really?"

"I've known Troy for years—"

"So has Cully." He would have to listen eventually, and surely the fury would die down—or at least burn itself out.

"She does  _not_  know him as well as I do."

"Then why don't you let her?"

" _Let her?_ " her husband asked, his gaze searing.

"Get to know him better," she said, happy that her voice remained level. Joyce was already exasperated, and for once wished she had another stack of towels to fold or something else to iron. She knew where the conversation would end, where all the prior ones had.

"I can tell her enough." He was pacing, anxious and nearly angry, and his words were faster. "The worst driver I've ever met, no sense, married  _and_  divorced long before he was thirty, and never— _never_ —a good thing to say about her— _Maureen_ —ever!" He spat out the woman's name like a vile curse or poison.

The anger in Tom's voice shocked Joyce, like everything that been pent-up—Cully, Gavin, the case—was streaming out, and he was unable to halt it. "Really?" she asked quietly. "Married once already?"

"Yes, Joyce," he continued, his face beginning to color from the hot blood under the skin, " _Gavin Troy._  Married god knows when and divorced a year after he was promoted to sergeant."

"Tom—"

"Just the sort of man you want, isn't he— _dating_  your daughter?"

_Well, that's a start,_  she thought. Even if he didn't like it, he had at least said what it was. "What on earth happened?"

He breathed easier, the sudden redness on his cheeks already fading. "How the hell should I know—"

Joyce walked away from the ironing board again, stopping a foot or so away from him. "We're all allowed mistakes, dear."

"That's more than just a  _mistake_ ," Tom said quietly, drawing his arms in tighter.

"Then half the country is in trouble," she added lightly.

"Half the country is not what I'm worried about."

Joyce laid her hand against his shoulder once more; it was now loose and almost sagging beneath her fingers. "It can't be that bad."

"Oh yes, it can be—it  _is_."

"Do you really think she doesn't know?" Joyce asked. Even if Cully had never mentioned it, she was sure her daughter was aware of it, just as Gavin knew of Cully's relationship with Nico. And probably for some time.

"Of course she does," Tom said, shaking his head again. "I can only think she doesn't care."

Joyce dropped her hands to the counter, curling them around the edge as she leaned against it.  _He won't be happy to hear it._  But it was only a question. "What happens, Tom, if you don't do anything?"

"If I don't do anything..." He spoke each word cautiously, slowly, like he was considering the option for the first time, staring at the tile and tracing the possibilities through the grout as though they might lead to an answer.

_Surely not,_  Joyce thought. He  _must_  have turned it over more than once, if only to dismiss it. "Because you don't have to, you know."

"I should keep myself to myself?" he asked quietly.

"Something like that."

Tom scowled, almost shivering. "It's out of the question."

"It's not your question to ask and it's not your choice to make," she said, moving away from the counter into the main part of the kitchen and letting her mind drift to the evening's dinner. There was no point in trying to reason with him now, not when his mind was already set. "It's Cully's, and you can't make it for her," she continued, opening the cupboard and removing two plates.

"I can make sure it's a  _fair_  choice."

The ceramic was shrill on the counter as she set the plates down heavily. No point at all. "It's still not yours."

Her husband said nothing but let out a long breath instead, running a hand over his face and rubbing his eyes for a brief moment. "Joyce..."

"I already told you, you only know Sergeant Troy," she said, turning back to him.

"Isn't that enough?"

"Not right now." There was nothing new to be said, not when they stood on opposite sides of the divide. "All that can happen is Cully will make another choice you don't like." Joyce was still unsure of how much  _she_  liked it—but what else was there to do?

"I thought we were done with those before she went off to Cambridge."

"She's an adult. You have to let go—"

"I have," he said rather loudly.

"Then you shouldn't be so worried," she added, now reaching for the wine glasses.

"I'm not worried—"

"Or upset."

"I am  _not_  upset."

"Yes, you are."

They both fell silent as Joyce opened the refrigerator, removing odds and ends for the meal—chicken breast and salad—before she filled a pot with water for the potatoes. And soon, Tom disappeared from the kitchen.  _Off to the study_ , Joyce decided.  _The best place for him right now._  But for a time, she stopped thinking about it all, instead focusing on the meal: plain baked chicken, boiled potatoes, and salad with a bottled vinaigrette. Not the meal Cully would have made, but edible, she hoped.

The potatoes were jumping in the water and the chicken was baking when she heard him again, looking up at the sound. His suit coat was gone, the knot in his tie was loose, and his face was calmer. "Feeling any better?" she asked gently.

"Not really," he said, though the ire was gone.

"You sound like you are."

"Only an illusion." His gaze remained unreadable: no longer angry, but certainly not happy. "You know I can blame you for this."

" _Me_?" Joyce asked, turning around quickly. "What did I do?"

"Your drama group," he said as he walked to her slowly and almost—tentatively. " _Amadeus_. That's when they met."

"It couldn't be avoided forever."

"I'll still do it," he said, almost amused.

"Only if you'll let it be," Joyce said, returning to the pot on the stove. The water sputtered, one large bubble exploding on the surface and sending off tiny droplets that immediately vanished.

"Then I'll blame you later." Tom peered at the potatoes, still dancing at the bottom, and Joyce wondered if he was imagining what their daughter might have prepared instead.

"Now you're just being tetchy."

"You're surprised?"

"No. But let me finish dinner," she said, checking the timer. She had produced dry and rubbery chicken too often to take her eyes away from it for more than a minute. "It might do you good to think about something else."

Standing straight once more, he opened his mouth, then stopped for a moment. "You're sure—it's just for two?" he asked, narrowing his eyes.

" _Yes_ , Tom." Opening the drawer beside the stove, Joyce removed a paring knife. "You should be, too."

"Don't make me think about it any more than I have to." His gaze moved from the potatoes to the salad—a package of mixed lettuce already in the bowl waiting to be dressed. "What's in the oven?"

"Chicken. Are you hungry?"

"Hardly had a chance to stop all day, except when—" He stopped, closing his eyes and just breathing. "Except when Troy almost took us off the road."

Reaching for his hand, Joyce wrapped her fingers around his briefly. They were warm, but stiff—still tense. "I'm glad to hear you say it," she said, smiling as she pushed up her other arm's sleeve.

"And don't expect much more." Already, Tom was looking at the bottles of wine on the counter, pondering and considering. Something to occupy his mind. "I'm hoping to avoid indigestion."

"Do you know what I think the real problem is?"

"I don't, but I'm sure you'll tell me."

Selecting a potato in the middle, Joyce prodded at it with the tip of the knife—once lightly, then more forcefully as her forearm turned bright pink, hovering in the white steam wafting off the water. "You and she are as stubborn as each other."

Her husband laughed, the sound at last easy and free. "You knew that a long time ago," he said, lifting the bottle he had chosen. "And it's not going to change."

The potato was still hard, refusing to yield to the tip of her knife in the slightest. "For either of you," she said, setting the knife beside the stove. "But could you do something for me, Tom?"

"Of course, love." Turning the bottle in his hand, Tom dropped his eyes to the label, reexamining his selection. "What?"

"Could you put those towels away?" she asked, nodding to them as she shook her arm, the sting already fading.

"Now  _you're_  just trying to get rid of me," he said, setting the bottle down again.

"And the board?"

He kissed her quickly and lightly. " _Really_  trying to get rid of me."

Giving the timer another glance, Joyce said, "No, I'm just trying to  _keep_  your mind off of things."


	15. Chapter 14: Practice

**Chapter 14: Practice**

"'What the devil have I done with my slippers?'"

"'There are your slippers. And there. Take your slippers; and may you never have a day's luck with them!'"

"'What on earth— What's the matter? Get up...Anything wrong?'"

"'Nothing wrong—with  _you_.'"

"God, she's mad at him, isn't she?" Troy said, dropping the book to the patio table, the binding worn enough that it lay open on its own.

"And with good reason, Gavin!"

It wasn't the first time Troy had interrupted the flow of the play, but after nearly two weeks of reading through it time after time, it was of little consequence. It was now rare that Cully dropped a phrase, or added a word, or forgot a line. But Troy never turned down her requests for help, especially as her rehearsals were about to begin in full force.

That evening two weeks prior, she had briefly reviewed the play for him—his memory of the second half was more than vague—at least at first. The conversation had rapidly turned away from  _Pygmalion_ , but not to the current investigation as it often did. There was little to say about it, anyway. Every possibility pursued yielded nothing, forensics had exhausted the evidence collected by SOCO, and whoever they were chasing blindly remained enveloped by shadows.

Instead, the discussion had turned to the past: old memories, childhood pastimes, widely divergent experiences at Causton Comprehensive, all the things that were both meaningless and more important than ever. Hours of happy, easy words had disappeared in minutes, only ending when Troy realized just how late it had become. Despite the arrival of the weekend, another day of brief, veiled accusations and a stagnated case loomed too close to indulge in her presence for another second—or hour.

Yet after he had driven her home and walked up the sidewalk with her to the door, unwilling to lose a moment more of her presence than he had to, Troy wished he had said nothing and ignored the time altogether. What did the next day matter, Barnaby's glares and sudden silences, all that nonsense? It  _didn't,_  Troy knew as he kissed her again, starved for her touch for almost a week. His hand had reached for her—just to hold her closer, nothing more—before he remembered not  _what_  but  _where_.

Cully had moved with certainty, opening the door and stepping inside to a mercifully empty sitting room without hesitation, knowing the evening must come to an end eventually. Barnaby's ire would rise to the top some day, but not now, not when she turned back to Troy, touched his hand, and said quietly, "I'll talk to you tomorrow."

In the past two weeks, he had seen her more often—not every day, but nearly—always with a copy of  _Pygmalion_  in her hand. He collected her from the library each afternoon, their time together spent over tea or coffee, reading her lines. Or intending to: sometimes their meetings had begun and finished without looking at the play once. Never intentionally—it was simply forgotten. And those evenings together were growing longer; as the burglary investigation had worn on, his workdays had become shorter, now almost comparable to the rest of the country's. There was no point in reviewing tired ground again and again.

And when the next weekend had arrived, those two days finally free of interviews and hours staring at whiteboards rereading the same facts, Troy knew he had spent almost every moment with Cully. On Saturday, after a cricket match that yielded victory rather than embarrassing defeat, a quick dinner had not touched on the play at all. Then on Sunday, sitting on the patio behind her parents' house, the conversation had again drifted from the play to so many other things.

Despite how easy it was to talk to her, Troy's skin still prickled—even sitting across from her stoked the apprehension. Once or twice that Sunday, he had to look around, certain he felt Barnaby staring out a window, though Cully had laughed. Thankfully, he had never seen the chief inspector, like the man was avoiding the garden altogether. Not that Troy minded; the afternoon already felt supervised enough without  _knowing_  it as well.

Today—Saturday again—was the same, though the sense of observation was less oppressive.  _For the best,_  Troy thought. They were on the patio again, and he was sitting rather closer to her than before, holding the only copy of the play. Cully was near enough to glance at the text if she forgot a line entirely, but—disappointingly—far enough to be unable to see it with an easy glance.

"'I've won your bet for you, haven't I?'" Cully said, anger laced through the words. "'That's enough for you.  _I_  don't matter, I suppose.'"

"'You won my bet!'" Troy responded, just reading the line in a flat voice. After two weeks, he knew half of every character's lines except for Eliza's, but he never did anything but recite them. He was no actor, and he never would be. "'You! Presumptuous insect! I won it. What did you throw those slippers at me for?'"

"'Because I wanted to smash your face.'" And now  _her_  face was furious as well. "'I'd like to kill you, you selfish brute. Why didn't you leave me in the gutter? You thank—'"

"Sorry, hang on," Troy said, leaning forward, his arms on the table. He ran his eyes back along the page. "That's not it. 'Why didn't you leave me where you picked me out of—in the gutter?'"

The rage vanished. "No one's perfect, Gavin," she said, like she had never  _been_  angry. "'Why didn't you leave me where you picked me out of—in the gutter? You thank God it's all over, and that now you can throw me back again there, do you?'"

"'The creature is nervous, after all.'" She was so different in this moment, no longer the woman whom he had embraced and kissed. And it was not even another side of her: this was someone  _different_ , someone  _new_. The first few days Troy had hardly noticed how quickly and easily she transformed, pushing herself aside in favor of a person who had never existed outside of actresses like herself. But as his own knowledge of the play increased—more time to look at her rather than the text in the book—he saw her again and again, an unfamiliar woman wearing Cully's face.

_She_  was silent, just looking at him. Waiting. "It's still your line."

"Uh, it says here you're supposed to scream at me," Troy said, his finger pressed to the page.

"At Higgins, yes," she said, nodding before a small smile appeared on her mouth. "I'm sure I could find something—"

"No, it's fine," he said, waving his hand.

"Only if you're sure, Gavin."

Troy looked down again, rereading the text quickly to find his place. "'Ah! would you? Claws in, you cat. How dare you show your temper to me? Sit down and be quiet.'"

"'What's to become of me? What's to become of me?'" Her anger—Eliza's anger, Troy reminded himself—evaporated, confusion taking its place as Cully dropped her head, her hands shaking with Eliza's worry.

"'How the devil do I know what's to become of you? What does it matter what becomes of you?'"

"'You don't care. I know you don't care. You wouldn't care if I was dead. I'm nothing to you—not so much as them slippers.'"

"'Those slippers.'" It was ridiculous, correcting another's grammar, even if it was only a play; Barnaby pointed out enough errors in  _his_.

"'Those slippers.'" Annoyance, resignation. "'I didn't think it made any difference now.'"

"'Why have you begun going on like this?'" Troy set the book down, the pages pressed to the table to expose the worn, wrinkled spine. "Not the most pleasant bloke, is he?"

"Not really," Cully said lightly, the façade of Eliza vanishing.

"It doesn't make any sense: she hates him here, but by the end it sounds like she's going to stay on anyway. Or he thinks she might."

"Well, she does, in a way." She settled back in her chair—farther away.

"I never saw that."

"Didn't you read the notes at the end, Gavin?" she asked, grinning as he remained silent. "It's everything Shaw wanted to reader to know, but couldn't be put into the play."

"Answer everything, do they?"

"Mostly. She marries Freddy, becomes like a daughter to Colonel Pickering, and remains a very sharp thorn in Higgins' side." Cully laughed, shifting forward again and setting her elbows on the table, her hands folded under her chin. "I think she likes being the thorn the most."

_She really is beautiful,_  he thought, his eyes tracing the edge of her jaw, the line of her neck, the curve of her shoulders— "It's still odd," he said, sitting straighter. These afternoons and evenings were as torturous as they were pleasant. Picking the book up again, Troy flipped through the pages to the back where the broken text gave way to paragraphs. She would drive him mad for no reason at all and never even know it. "Why would she stay on if she hates him?"

"She finds him—and his indifference—interesting," Cully said, still looking directly at him. "He doesn't need her, but he's gotten so used to her being there that, in a way, he does. And it's not just him she doesn't like. Here." She pushed her chair closer to his, reaching for the book and turning to one of the final pages. "'She likes Freddy,'" Cully began, "'and she likes the Colonel; and she does not like Higgins and Mr. Doolittle.'" She stopped, her eyes narrowing. "'Galatea never does quite like Pygmalion,'" she continued after a moment, "'his relation to her is too godlike to be altogether agreeable.'"

Troy shook his head; that name was completely foreign to him. "Wait—who's Galatea?"

"She's the statue."

"What statue?"

"You don't know much mythology either, do you?" she asked as she closed the play once more.

"Not enough, I guess," he said. She would drive him mad  _and_  irritate him. "I didn't need mythology to pass my exams."

She slid the book back to his hand. "It's the inspiration for the play, or at least one of them."

"Is that where the title comes from, too?"

Nodding, Cully said, "Yes."

"What's it about, then? It's still a weird name for a play."

"It's classical mythology," she said, laying her arms flat on the table, one of hers against his own. "Pygmalion was a sculptor who carved a woman out of ivory. He had rejected women—"

"No wonder, if he was an artist," Troy said, scowling. "You almost expect it."

"Because Venus had cursed them, not because he—" Cully released a heavy sigh, then slapped his hand, harder than he expected. But her other arm had not moved. "Come on, Gavin!"

"I didn't say—"

"You're impossible, sometimes. You really are."

"All right," Troy said, trying not to think about it, "he rejected them because they'd been cursed."

"By Venus," Cully continued, pushing a lock of hair away from her eyes. "But he fell in love with the statue he had carved, and he prayed for Venus to send him a wife who looked like her. When he went out and kissed the statue—"

"He kissed the bloody statue?" Troy's voice was weak in his own ears as he looked at her, almost  _stared_  at her.

" _Yes_ , Gavin. And when he did, it came to life."

"So—that's Galatea, is it?" Her last words had been an echo—distant and faded—as he watched her face, her hand, just  _her_ ; he had almost forgotten to listen.

"Yes."

"Why the hell would he fall in love with a statue, Cully? Even if it is just a myth."

"She's the ideal," Cully said, pulling one of her legs up into the chair, pressing her body further back. "I suppose that's what he meant, right at the end."

"Shaw?" Troy already missed her touch, even something as meaningless as her arm laid beside his.

"'Too godlike', remember? Pygmalion's already created her  _physically_ , why shouldn't he try to mold her mind, too?"

"Brainwash her?" he asked, opening the book from the back, flipping forward to find the beginning of the notes.

"No," she said, laughing softly, "transform her completely into the ideal."

"I guess." The pages slipped through his fingers to the end once more. "God, that's a lot."

"They don't really matter for the play itself—only if you're interested in the story."

"Oh, thanks," Troy said, squinting at the first lines. He preferred her just sending him out of his mind. "When does this open, anyway?"

"Three weeks from this past Thursday." She looked at her hands for a moment, clasped around the knee she had propped against the edge of the chair. "You will be there opening night, won't you?" she asked.

She almost sounded  _nervous,_  Troy realized. "I told you I haven't missed one in years. I won't start now," he said quietly.

"Good." Cully uncurled her leg, setting it on the patio again before she stood up. "Do you fancy some coffee, Gavin?"

"Sure." Pushing his chair back, he began to stand as well—

"Don't worry," she said, setting a palm on his shoulder, almost holding him down, "I'll be back. You can start  _reading_  the author's notes."

"It feels like I'm back at school. Sort of." It certainly felt like an assignment.

"Is it better this time round?" Cully asked.

"Of course," Troy said. He had never hidden his hatred of Causton Comprehensive for anyone; she had called it absurd. "It couldn't be any worse."

Taking her hand from his shoulder, she brushed it through his hair; the longer sections at his temples were beginning to curl, as they always did. Beneath her fingertips, his skin burned. "Good."

Even in the afternoon sun, Troy shivered as her footsteps disappeared, and god only knew which reason was to blame. Her touch, her absence—no matter how brief, he already felt it—the eyes he knew were almost certainly stationed inside the house and watching every second...The possibilities were so knotted together, it was impossible to know.

In the end, it might be safer to remain outside.


	16. Chapter 15: A Red Light

**Chapter 15: A Red Light**

The tray was already laid out: two mugs, a small jug of milk, the sugar dish, and a small plate of biscuits. Those last two were probably more important than the coffee, Cully knew. Gavin had, if nothing else, a sweet tooth; she had never seen him drink either coffee or tea without adding a sickly amount of sugar. Even on the previous occasion when she had prepared coffee for him in this kitchen, she had almost retched when he dipped the spoon into the sugar bowl—what was it, three times? Sugar with a little coffee, really. And he would surely dunk a biscuit or two as well.  _He'll never change,_  she thought, putting on the kettle.

It was for the best, having the coffee outside. If she allowed herself to think about that day, the guilt still rose sometimes. That afternoon, she had not merely played a character, she had performed a lie, at least at first. Someone calm and collected who did not still seethe with anger—until that woman collapsed around the edges. The fury had escaped and regret had taken its place. But today she was just Eliza, and herself. No, even that was wrong: Eliza had departed for the day, leaving only  _her_. Not a caricature: the other woman she had transformed herself into had vanished long ago, and Cully was certain she would never return.

Cully counted the scoops of coffee: six generous spoonfuls, each dropped cleanly into the cafetière as she listened for bubbling water. Each afternoon or evening spent over tea or coffee was the happiest point of her day, bright minutes and occasionally hours that she anticipated when she woke. A copy of  _Pygmalion_  always lay between them, ignored as often as not; and really, the pretense had nearly run its course. Now, she was merely refining and reviewing, a task she had in the past easily accomplished on her own, occasionally seeking out a few minutes of help for a fiddly phrase. Every time she had needed help with her lines, when she had been home, she had sought out her mother or father. But for this one, not once.

"Times are already that desperate?"

Cully looked up as her father spoke, surprised to see him at all. The entire time she had spent on the patio with Gavin on Sunday, he had not emerged from his study once until Gavin had gone. "Hi, Dad," she said, glancing back to the kettle, impatiently demanding the water to come to a boil. "I didn't think I'd see you at all this afternoon." Through most of the week as well, their paths had hardly crossed: most of his time at home was devoted to rereading reports, and she rarely arrived before dinner. She loved him dearly, but it was a relief to avoid the questions he asked to mask those he would not.

"Even I reach a point when I don't want to work anymore," he said, almost grinning as he crossed the kitchen to join her. "Believe it or not."

"I don't," Cully said, sliding the mugs around the tray, creating more space for the coffee pot. "But I'll let Mum know. She'll be happy to hear that."

"She's seen me reach it."

"I'm sure." Turning her gaze to the kettle again—a few spots on the surface jumped as the water reached a simmer—Cully rolled her eyes. Her father allowed his work to take over his life more often than not. No day was sacred when he was consumed by a case, not holidays, birthdays, even his wedding anniversary.

"Once or twice," he said after a moment.

"Then she won't need me to remind her. She'll remember all of them."

"Probably. How are things coming along?"

"Pretty well," she said, returning her gaze to him. His face was tight, a thought in his mind struggling to form. "We're reading through it a second time."

"Any problems?" he asked, relaxing slightly as he rested his lower back against the counter.

"Only the little ones that never go away."

"Well, no surprises there."

"Thanks, Dad," Cully said lowly, now pushing the milk jug behind the coffee mugs. He didn't mean anything by it, she knew: in his mind, it was probably humorous. And it was—or it would be in a week or so, but not yet.

Lifting his hand, he pointed a finger at her, almost kindly. " _You're_  the one always pointing out what went wrong."

"Because I always know." Each rendition of any play she had ever acted in ended with that same review: the mistakes, the errors that were not  _errors_  but she hated nonetheless, the moments she would change for the next performance, a dozen other things that rankled...

"So what you're telling me is that you know your lines perfectly."

"No—"

"Almost perfectly."

"I'm  _getting_  there," she said. Everything remained in flux well beyond the first performance—lines were perfected, lighting and cues altered, the entire play waited to be remolded to the director's vision and whim. "That's always the way it is."

"Oh, I remember," he went on. "That's what you've always said." Stopping for a moment, he folded his arms across his chest. "Done for the day?"

"We're just taking a break." The kettle finally boiled with ferocious, violent bubbles, and Cully turned the switch off. Reaching for the jar of coffee to drop a few more spoonfuls into the pot, she added, "Cup of coffee for you?"

"Ah, no," he said, his voice flat and distant, almost empty. "No, thank you."

Pulling her hand back from the jar, Cully stiffened as she picked up the kettle.  _There it is._  "What is it?" she asked, pouring the water over the coffee, foam the color of milk chocolate instantly rising to the top, coating the sides of the pot as the grounds floated.

"How long have you been working today?"

"A couple of hours, that's all," she said, setting the kettle down again and moving the steaming coffee pot to the center of the tray.

He stared at it—thinking—as she placed the plunger on top, pressing it down to just above the water's surface. "And, uh, how is Troy?"

"He's fine, Dad," Cully said, turning back around. "Why wouldn't he be?"

"No reason—"

"Yes, there is."

"I ask questions. That's my job," he said, frowning as he did.

"I thought you were done with work for the day."

"I did—"

"It's not work, though," she said, glancing out the kitchen window for a moment. The patio table was just visible, as was Gavin, slouching in his chair with his head down. Reading, she hoped as she smiled—no, she was certain he was.

"I never said I was through asking questions—"

"Can't you just leave it alone?" she snapped, looking back. A flush was spreading across her cheeks, her eyes narrowing with anger.

"Leave what alone?" her father asked lightly, almost innocently.

"Dad!"  _God,_  she thought,  _why can't you just_ say  _it?_

"What do you want me to do?" Dropping his arms, he stood straight.

"To stay out of it."

"Stay out of what?" he asked, sounding exactly like what she knew he was, a concerned father ready to pry.

_Please, won't you just say it?_  "Dad, don't pretend—"

"This is not something I want to do, Cully," he said, stepping closer to her.

"What?"

"Let you make another mistake." He spat the words out, all the concern suddenly gone.

"You don't want to  _let_  me." she said quietly.  _Let me? I'm not a child._

"Watch you, then," he said, reaching out a hand for her shoulder—and Cully pulled away from him.

God,  _he_  was the one being childish—or at least stubborn. " _I'm_  the one who has to decide if it's a mistake or not!"  _It isn't_ , Cully wanted to add—but, no, she couldn't.  _She_ hardly knew what to make of it all—but it couldn't be that!

"Fine, I'll just watch—"

"Like you did before?" she asked, not caring that she interrupted him.

"Cully—"

"What do you know that you think I don't?" It was anger now, nothing else. She had kept no secrets from Gavin and if he had wanted to keep any from her, he had chosen them poorly. Surely his marriage and divorce would have been buried the furthest, yet he had freely mentioned both long ago—albeit with a touch of embarrassment. "Because whatever it is, you're wrong."

He sighed, shaking his head—almost shuddering—as he closed his eyes. "Cully—"

"What did you say to Gavin?"

"I don't know what you mean," he said, the unhappy expression deepening as he stepped away from her.

_Well, you_ should  _be unhappy_ , she said to herself. "That's what I thought," she said, again playing with the mugs and coffee pot. If she didn't have one moment to breathe, to shove it all aside..."He still hasn't told me," she added, calmer, "and I don't think he ever will."

"That is  _his_  choice."

"You could tell me."

"I only reminded him of the way things were." He appeared so tired, like the row—surely that was what it was—was suddenly exhausting.

"Were?" Cully couldn't push away the guilt that had surged when the angry words began. She hated arguing with her father and rarely had since she had first gone to university, but this one couldn't be helped, not when it was his doing.

" _Are,_ " he said, louder, finding one more burst of energy.

"And nothing can ever change?" she asked. They were only going to begin the cycle anew, running around in a circle that would never end.

"Not that much."

"Maybe for you," Cully said quietly, finally picking up the tray. He could think whatever he wanted—and he would.

"Are you sure there's enough sugar in there?" he asked as she walked to the patio door, nodding at the platter.

"Dad, it's fine."

"You never know with Troy."

Cully offered her father a scowl as she reached the door, turning and stepping into the afternoon sun without saying anything else, the world blindingly bright at first. If that was all he had to say, she would leave him to it.

Gavin was still reading, his body loose in the chair, the book's spine kept open with one hand and the back pages held with the other. This afternoon, he was outside of that uniform he wore every working day, as he often was when she saw him now. Instead of a suit and tie, he was dressed like any other man on a Saturday: jeans, a dark button-down shirt open at the collar—though tucked in at the waist—and shoes chosen for comfort rather than show.

"Have you gotten to the end?" she asked, almost laughing as he jumped, his limbs tensing as he sat straight and his fingers tightening on the book's cover.

Gavin shook his head. "All that?" he asked, holding it aloft, the final section of notes still firmly tucked behind his right thumb.

"Then where are you?" Setting the tray on the table, Cully sat again, pushing her chair closer to his. Over Gavin's shoulder, she glanced at the kitchen window; even with the glare from the sun, she saw his face, still unhappy.

"To Eliza knowing 'even had there been no mother-rival, she would still have refused to accept an interest in herself that was secondary to philosophic interests.' " He tossed the book down. "God, if he wanted you to know all that, why not find a way to get it  _into_  the bloody play?"

"Because drama doesn't always work that way," Cully said, pressing the cafetière's plunger through the grounds.

"Or maybe Shaw just wasn't good enough."

"If you wanted to see all that performed, you'd be sitting in the theater for a lot longer." Lifting the coffee pot, she poured out the first cup, sliding it to Gavin before pouring the second.

"Thanks." Into his mug went a generous dollop of milk, then two—no, still three—heaping spoonfuls of sugar. Adding a little of each to her own cup, Cully grinned, passing the plate of biscuits to him.

"What's so funny?" he asked, taking the first sip of coffee.

"Dad was right."

Gavin grimaced for a moment—though the expression vanished almost as soon as it was born—while he reached for a biscuit. "About what?"

His words had been light and easy. "It's a good thing that dish of sugar is full." Cully set her hand on his arm as he touched the plate, kissing his cheek before he could say anything. "Don't worry, Gavin," she said, "he's not  _always_  right."

"Yeah," he said quietly, sliding his arm beneath her fingers, bringing his hand to hers. "Try telling him."

"I just did."

Gavin looked at her, his eyes confused and...almost happy as he twisted his fingers through hers. "I'm sure he liked that."

"Of course not." Cully laughed briefly. "Did you expect anything else?"

"No." He almost looked away but then leaned to her, his lips lingering on hers as her heart rushed. The kiss—gentle and desperately hungry—gave way to hot breath when he drew away, clenching her hand tighter, his pale skin revealing no apprehension.

_Good,_  she thought.  _You can't be afraid forever, Gavin._  "I don't think he liked that either," she said softly. It was impossible to forget, her father probably still standing at the window, frowning, glowering...and she refused to look, her gaze never leaving Gavin. Her father could have his own thoughts—she didn't care.

Gavin settled further back into his chair, not loosening his grip. Already, she hated the distance. "No," he said, "I don't think so."


	17. Chapter 16: The Blind Spot

**Chapter 16: The Blind Spot**

In his study, Barnaby collapsed into the chair, a ragged breath escaping from his throat. The more he thought about it, the more he wished for another call about another burglary. It would reinvigorate the case, force him back to the office—and Troy as well. That would be a place to start, a wrench in the machine to get the man away from his daughter.

He picked up one of the forensic reports again, lifting it from the top of an ever growing pile of papers describing muddy footprints, torn fibers, tool marks, and fingerprints. The footprints, present at several scenes, were similar but too smeared to be of any use. The fibers, found at several others, were identical but probably matched thousands of gloves or jumpers. The tool marks, at least, would lead somewhere—the scratches were clear enough for a match whenever they found evidence for comparison. But the fingerprints, though not smudged, were worthless without a suspect. There was no criminal record attached to them and they could hardly be conclusive since they appeared at only two of the crime scenes. After nearly two weeks, they still didn't know where to look—  _Not that_ knowing _means anything,_  Barnaby thought, tossing the report back to his desk.  _Tell them what you know and they act like they didn't hear you at all._  Joyce, Cully,  _all_  of them.

How many more times was Joyce going to tell him he  _only_  knew Sergeant Troy? His wife could think what she wanted—and she would—but that was enough for him, _more_  than enough! She might even have some belated words of kindness for him—for  _Gavin_. Even thinking of her certain sympathy drove a shudder through him. Barnaby remembered well those weeks and months, his sergeant's already somewhat troubling investigative skills worn to the bloody bone by his divorce. And what was the cause? One too many nights at the office or in the car or out at a crime scene, Troy had said. Too much for her to put up with, like that was reason enough.

Hardly. It was more like an excuse. Barnaby had nearly thirty years as a policeman behind him—years of working odd hours, sometimes for days without a break, through nights and weekends and holidays when a case gripped him and refused to let go—but his relationship with Joyce had never shaken. It had been strained once or twice, but nothing more. It was just another one of Troy's poor choices, Barnaby was certain, if his sergeant's marriage had fallen apart so quickly when it faced the inevitable.

"I  _only_  know him," he growled, curling one hand into a fist. " _Only?_ " Barnaby let out a deep breath again and loosened his hand, his palm burning beneath the bite of his fingernails. What would she say about that, a marriage ending almost before it had begun, crushed beneath what they had both endured? Whatever she said, her glare would be enough. And he already heard her words, gentle yet firm:  _"Extenuating circumstances."_  She would see no fault in anyone.

Yet what had  _he_  seen when Cully and Troy had first met? It was an innocent, almost harmless moment— _"Oh, Troy, this is my daughter, Cully. Cully, Gavin Troy."_  But it was a moment sullied as his sergeant's still married eyes lingered on her for a second too long when Troy surely believed he had ceased to watch. It  _could_  have been an innocent moment.  _That_  sort of man dating his daughter?  _No._  Crossing his arms, Barnaby stared at his desk—the scattered papers, the phone, the crime scene photographs—no longer just wishing but  _demanding_  that something happen.

Nothing did.

God, perhaps the man's stupidity was tolerable but not his gaze, or the words that left his mouth without a single thought. The possibility was not acceptable—it was unthinkable—not when Troy's attention was so easily distracted...But then what of Sergeant Brierley?  _"_ _He's hardly said a word to me all morning...It's not like him, sir."_ And she was right: no one  _ever_  acted out of character—

No. No.  _No._  It remained unacceptable, no matter the past, no matter the reason.

Yet whatever he knew—whatever he said—sympathy for Troy and a knowing stare for himself would be Joyce's responses.  _What did I tell you?_  her face would say. Best to think about that when it came—madness from the person he relied upon most for comfort, the  _only_  one right now. Barnaby stood again, taking a few anxious steps away from his desk before turning around, following the same path to his desk. Turn, more steps, another turn, yet more steps...

God, he couldn't think! Hesitating in the kitchen a few minutes ago had been the mistake: glancing out the window, waiting, watching—and turning away. He had no longer been able to watch as his sergeant— _his bloody sergeant!—_ clasped his daughter's fingers, kissed her, refused to release her hand, and god only knew what else. The possibilities sat like a rock in his stomach, seething and poisonous and draining.

It was not anger now, not rage, but disappointment. He could say nothing, he could  _do_  nothing, not when his daughter was about to head into something so idiotic and not worry about the aftermath  _again_! But then, she never had, not with friends or boyfriends or lovers, neither at secondary school nor university. Why did he expect her to be wiser now? Sitting once more, Barnaby folded his hands together atop the mess of reports, closing his eyes as he already knew the answer.

He expected her to be wiser because in the past few years, she  _had_  been wiser. Ever since she had begun acting, she had almost put those years behind her, like she was ready to consider what might lie in the future. How else had her relationship with Nico lasted so long? Yet she considered this craziness now...But it was more than that: it was insanity, a bloody awful  _mess_.

There was no way out. Barnaby wanted few things in life more than for his daughter to be happy—that had forced him to hold his tongue long enough, then  _and_  now—but not like this. Foolishness was not happiness. He saw no way out, only a way through. There was no chance of knowing which way to go, not when he was trailing after Cully blindly, certain she didn't know the path either. Sometimes Barnaby wondered if his daughter found it amusing, trying to drive him out of his mind—because she was.

Barnaby ignored the churning in his abdomen as he reached for a stack of photographs. The scraped windowsills lay frozen on the glossy paper, the images almost identical from one page to the next; the muddy footprints were indecipherable, the enlarged fingerprints cruel and taunting. So many crimes one after the other, a series of the bloody ridiculous choices of every miscreant.

Well, that was the trouble, wasn't it: choice. There was no accounting for it, no words to persuade a headstrong person to turn away from a poor one, no way to make a choice for another. Joyce was right about that, even if she remained mistaken regarding everything else.

_Then I'll let her,_  he thought, shuffling through the photographs again, the sheen marred by his own fingerprints and the edges showing the wear of frequent examination. _Cully's made it through other foolish decisions before. She'll make it through this one, too._  Perhaps it was impossible for her to understand reason now, but she might one day understand the consequences even if she had to live through them again.

There was no other way.


	18. Chapter 17: Continuing Navigation

**Chapter 17: Continuing Navigation**

"What?"

"How did it go today?" Gavin asked again, half looking over his left shoulder as he changed lanes, still not bothering to use the indicator. Cully was certain he did sometimes, but she never remembered witnessing it.

"Oh...About what you'd expect," she said, almost yawning. The initial staging rehearsal—the true introduction to the director's desires and dreams—was always one of the most difficult and tiring, particularly after only doing run-throughs with the other cast members. "Missed lines and cues, and the director still hasn't decided on much of anything."

"Missed lines?" he said, the car swerving briefly when he glanced at her. "Not you, surely."

Cully closed her eyes against the brilliant late afternoon sun, her mind exhausted and muddled by the day. Her copy of  _Pygmalion_  was now laden with notes—all in pencil, ready to be both smudged and erased. "Of course I missed some, Gavin. It was the first real rehearsal."

"After going through them that many times?"

"It's different reacting to them," she said, squinting when she opened her eyes. "Especially when the director stops the whole thing every minute for blocking."

"Right," he said, downshifting. The car's engine roared, shuddering as Gavin bore down on the accelerator to overtake a car in the adjacent lane—and Cully clenched her fingers on the car's door, her eyes now wide and her mind perfectly clear.  _At least that's something good,_  she thought. If nothing else Gavin's driving would wake her up, even if it only did so by doubling her pulse. It had done so most afternoons during the past two weeks.

"You wouldn't make a great actor, you know," she said quickly, her heart still pounding as Gavin changed lanes once more, without glancing over his shoulder this time. Again, he ignored the indicator. "You just read them."

"Isn't that what I was supposed to do?" he asked, returning the car to the next gear up.

"Yes, but you didn't put anything into them. That's the difference." Her hand relaxed as the engine quieted. "But, what about you?"

"Hmm?" His mind was elsewhere, Cully realized.

"How was your day, Gavin?"

"Oh, fine," he said, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel. "Just doing the last forms for all those burglaries."

"Did you ever catch him?"

Gavin let out a sigh, almost a hiss as his face darkened. "No. Slimy devil."

She touched his shoulders, the muscle noticeably tense through his jacket and shirt. "Well, if he's done nine of them, he's probably not going to stop."

"He did once," he said, the drumming of his fingers faster and louder. "No reason he won't do it again."

It was unlike him to be this caught up by a case. She expected it from her father, but not from Gavin. "But then he started again—"

"And  _we_  had to start from scratch."

"Is something wrong, Gavin?" she asked, pulling her hand back.

"What?" he asked, his voice flat. More than observing the traffic ahead, he was staring out the window, thoughts churning in a way she had never seen before.

"This isn't like you. You're never this wrapped up by work."

Gavin scowled, his fingers white as they tightened around the wheel only to loosen after a moment. "I don't like putting a couple of weeks of work into something that doesn't go anywhere."

"You'll sort it out," she said quietly.

He shook his head as he turned off Causton's high street. "You mean your dad will."

"You solved the murder in Midsomer Market, didn't you?"

"Sure," he said vacantly after a moment.

"You  _did_ , Gavin." This case had drawn him in, enveloped him—and she didn't like it. "Even Dad said so."

The car slowed to a stop at a red light, the intersection ahead filled with cars crossing the road: going straight, turning right and left, yielding as other vehicles came from the opposite direction. "There  _was_  something odd today, Cully," he said, looking at her while the car was motionless. "I got a phone call from him, about a missing person. I thought your parents were at a funeral."

"Yes, Karl Wainwright's," Cully said, pushing a few wayward strands of hair out of her face, "out in Midsomer Magna."

"Never heard of him." The light turned green and Gavin pressed the accelerator heavily.

He was with her again, sitting in the car rather than at his desk, talking instead of stewing. "He always donated to Mum's drama group," she said.  _Not that money can fix everything._  Cully had attempted to enjoy every performance she had seen, but she had been more than a little relieved when the group dissolved after that murder. Every interminable evening of sitting through awkward words and stilted movements had been torture. "I guess he did a lot for Midsomer Magna. Causton, too. I think she would have felt guilty if she didn't go. Dad just got roped into it."

"One bloke didn't turn up for it." Gavin swerved to avoid a cyclist, though the man still jerked his bicycle toward the curb. "No surprise there," he added faintly.

"Why would you think that?"

"It's a funeral, Cully."

"So?" she asked, sitting straighter.

"Well, no one goes if they can help it. I still can't believe your parents went."

At times, Cully was convinced Gavin did not give a moment's thought to anything he said. If he did, the world would never hear a great deal of it. "Most people don't think the way you do, Gavin," she said, gazing out the passenger window. "It's a final time to see whoever died. And it's respectful."

"It's not like it was his father, Cully, just his boss."

"You wouldn't go to Dad's?" Cully asked, instantly hating the words as her skin burned. But he didn't answer and she was glad she could not see his face. Neither Gavin nor her father could face a working day without the knowledge that, however improbable, it might be the final one they had.

Cully shivered. She and her mother had confronted it as well—truly seen it—that night a few months ago, watching him struggle for air and claw through a drugged haze that had lingered through much of the next morning. No matter how unlikely, how remote the chance, surely neither Gavin nor her father could just  _ignore_  it."I'm sorry," she said, looking away from the window, no longer seeing anything. When she thought about that evening, breathing was still too difficult. "I shouldn't— I'm sorry, Gavin."

He drew a deep breath. "No worries." Now he was silent—thinking about that night, the possibilities it evoked? "But I would. It's not the same thing," Gavin added, tapping the indicator before he turned again.

_A first time for everything,_  she thought unhappily, the clicking ending abruptly.

It would always be different from anything else, Cully knew, the relationship between two policemen. It was an occupation that day after day and year after year sent its officers into the unknown. That man across the table: was he a killer or a witness? That woman whose body had just been identified: was she an innocent bystander or someone with a secret poisonous enough to lead to her murder? There was no way to be sure until everything was revealed—and the only path to that end was through the murky world of ignorance and uncertainty. It was a world that could be dangerous and could only be navigated with unshakeable trust, far more than even she or her mother could ever hope to understand. "I know," she said quietly. He had surely been as frightened as her that night.

Silence took over, leaden and awkward. It had been a stupid thing to say and a simple apology was not enough to clear the air. One thought after another wound through her mind, each one trite and useless. "Did—he say anything else about him?" she managed after a minute, trying to forget that the detour had ever happened. "The man that didn't go to the funeral?"

"No." Gavin stopped, peering into his wing mirror before turning again. "Don't think he knows anything else." One of his hands wandered to his neck, further loosening the knot in his tie. "So—what's got this director confused already?"

Cully smiled to herself. He was willing to  _let_  her forget. "Nothing, Gavin. He just hasn't decided how he wants things done yet."

For the last few minutes of the ride, Cully reviewed the day further for Gavin: the director's comments, her deepening impressions of her fellow cast members, even a few of the lines she had forgotten. "I still can't believe you missed any," he muttered once. But at least his mind was on something else, Cully told herself. If it kept him—both of them—from thinking about that evening, he could ramble on about her lines all he wanted.

He was more careful than usual when he pulled into the drive, almost stopping instead of turning; his hand lingered on the keys in the ignition for a few seconds before he removed them. They often waited and talked for a few more moments—but they never sat like this, mute and uncomfortable. Tightening her grip on the door's handle, Cully opened the door, forcing herself to clamber out quickly. If she didn't do so  _now_...well, it would only be more difficult in another minute.

"Thanks for the lift, Gavin," she said, closing the door harshly as he got out as well.

"Why would I stop now?" he asked, leaning against the car's frame, one hand wrapped around the keys.

"I didn't mean that. But rehearsals probably won't ever end much earlier than this."

One side of his mouth turned up. "Then that'll make us even."

"I guess," she said, holding back a quick laugh, "until your burglar starts again."

The beginning of that smile faded, though nothing replaced it. "Maybe. It took him a few months last time." He paused, staring at his hand as he twisted the keys through his fingers before he spoke, his voice so quiet that Cully almost didn't hear him. "Hopefully he'll wait that long again."

_That makes both of us,_  she thought as they walked toward the front door together. When the investigation had utterly consumed him, his absence had become a constant—if mild—ache, always nagging at her mind. In such a short time, she had become so accustomed to seeing him almost every day and speaking to him on those few days she did not. He had nearly disappeared from her life—turnabout was fair play, after all—and she hated the thought of it happening again. Each time she saw him, the happiness was a little more complete, a little more overwhelming, a little more demanding.

"See you tomorrow?" Gavin asked as she thrust her key into the lock.

"If you'll still give me a lift," she said, turning back to him.

"Any reason why I shouldn't?"

"I don't think so."

He nearly laughed, even as his gaze fell to the pavement. This moment was longer each day, stretching from a few seconds to share a final word to minutes. Once they had stood on this spot for nearly a quarter of an hour; they had nothing new to say, but neither of them would say goodbye. And the kiss he always gave her, it too was changing, now deeper, longer, more confused...

Or rather, the kiss he  _almost_  always gave her. A few evenings ago whilst they were still talking, her father had opened the door, no doubt wondering what was taking so long after he heard the car pull in. No one had said anything; Gavin had offered a small bland smile, her father had frowned darkly, and Cully had struggled to just breathe as the air was suddenly heavy. There was no danger of that today, not if he was still in Midsomer Magna conducting a search.

"I'll see you then—"

"I'm sure you can stay for dinner this time," Cully interrupted, speaking faster than usual. The longer she let him think, the more reasons he might concoct for declining—and she might actually think at all.

He looked up, his eyes indecipherable. "Cully—"

"As long as you don't mind Mum's leftovers," she added. Her hand was no longer on the doorknob but on his arm—at his elbow—not holding it, but just touching him.

"Why would I?"

"I actually don't remember what she's got in there." Cully stepped closer to him, ready to hear him say  _no_. "I think she's trying Delia Smith again."

"I'm not sure I like the sound of that," Gavin said, lifting his arm—her hand rose as well, ready to catch hold of him if she had to—and dropping his keys into his jacket pocket.

"They've got to be eaten sometime," she said, breathing again, "and I'm sure Dad managed to have something at the reception."

"Before he went out on this search?"

His arm fell away from her hand, but Cully didn't care at the moment. "Of course. He always does, if he can."

"What about your mum?" Gavin asked as she opened the door to the dark sitting room. The curtains across the front window were closed and every light had long since been switched off. Just at the edge of the hallway that led into the kitchen, a patch of sunlight glowed on the carpet.

"She might have," Cully said, stepping inside, Gavin following her, "but I'm know Dad did."

"Doesn't that bother her?"

"Not anymore." Cully closed the door. Though dimmed, his face was still visible as the meager light caught and hung on his pale skin. Even with the time he spent on the cricket pitch, she had never seen a hint of color on his face—except when he was embarrassed. "She got over it pretty quickly."

"That's probably for the best," Gavin said, nodding his head to one side. "But it can't be that bad."

Cully laughed quietly, brushing a speck of invisible dust from one of his shoulders, his frame more distinct as her eyes adjusted. "Someday I might have to stick you to her liver and greens for that," she said.

"Her what?"

"Liver and greens," she repeated, crossing her arms. It had been years since she had endured that concoction and the memory remained vile. "You'd have to taste them to believe me."

"I'll believe you if you say I should."

"You should," Cully said, leaning toward him. Even with her hands pressed against her body, she still felt his shoulder beneath her palm as she had in the car—at first tense then relaxing before it transformed to warm, bare skin she could not touch. "But it won't be as bad as that." The knot—new and familiar—was twisting in her belly, already aching and demanding. "I promise."


	19. Chapter 18: The First Toll

**Chapter 18: The First Toll**

In only a minute after stepping into the kitchen, Cully had a container from the refrigerator, dishes, and a pot on the counter. A bag of pre-washed, pre-sliced lettuce and a bottle of dressing sat on the table, safely out of the way of her hands and elbows. "So what did your mum make?" Troy asked, slipping his arms out of his jacket sleeves. Just like in the CID station room, it was too warm to continue wearing it. His keys rattled in one of the pockets as he set it on the back of one of the kitchen chairs. As soon as he took his hand away, it hung lopsided.

" _B_ _œuf bourguignon_ ," she answered, peeling the lid away from the plastic tub. "I think this will be the end of it."

"Sounds good." Even across the kitchen, the faint scent of garlic immediately hung in the air, hiding another heavier smell he could not identify.

Cully laughed as she tipped the contents of the container into the pot, a reddish-brown sauce spilling out first. "I guess." She reached for a spatula.

"Or maybe not," Troy said as she scraped out the rest, solid chunks of what he presumed to be beef and—whatever else went into it. He had never been one for fine food, and all his scant childhood memories of such things were tainted by unhappiness. It was either his mother's exhausted face as she reheated what was left from Preddicott House's dinner table or his own cravings for spag bol and Chinese takeaway.

"It still won't be as interesting as her liver and greens," Cully said, setting the pan on one of the cooker's burners, quickly switching on the gas and turning it down to a low, deep blue flame.

"I'll still believe you and avoid that one." At least that dish sounded normal and unadorned. How some things had not only become refined and how people  _ate_  them...Troy still shuddered whenever he thought of people downing fresh oysters straight from the shell, let alone  _watching_  them. The briny, raw odor was enough to turn his stomach.

Cully only half looked at the pan as she stirred, holding the spatula delicately. "She hasn't made them for a while. I think Dad stayed late at work too often when he knew that was for dinner."

"That must have worried her sometimes," he said lowly.

"Not really." Her hand hovered over the stove lazily, still stirring. "He always called."

Troy didn't see how a mere phone call could alleviate the concern; placing such a phone call to a wife had never done so in his life. It rarely troubled him—it never had, not even in his first years as a constable—because he could not allow it to. If he permitted himself to dwell on what might lie around the corner, what the next hour might hold, it would just paralyze him. With Midsomer's bizarre murder rate, sometimes estimated to be double that of London...it was only sensible to worry. Sensible and impossible.

In all his time at Causton CID, Troy had never had the misfortune to hear of an officer's death. Injuries, yes, but never death in the line of duty. That announcement had never been made, the details of the necessary arrangements had never circulated through the station. God, he really could select the best things to say, his thoughtless earlier words echoing in his mind.  _Just. Just his boss._  She had been right to answer as she had. After more than half a decade as Barnaby's sergeant— He couldn't think about it, not after almost living through it. And how much worse would it be now as each day further entrenched Barnaby as not only his superior but as  _Cully's father_?

"...how he is, Gavin."

"What?" He hadn't been listening to her—though he had been  _watching_  her.

"Dad. When he gets started on something, it's impossible to stop him."

"Don't I know," Troy said, almost smiling. But it wasn't only the job and the cases: anything that caught Barnaby's mind drove him relentlessly until it the task was finished.  _Anything._

"Is something wrong?"

"No." His hand had tightened around the back of the chair, and now he loosened his fingers. "It's nothing."

Thoughts and words faded into silence as Cully continued to work, a quiet flurry of activity while she finished the meal. The bag of greens was opened and quickly dressed, a plate of leftover bread was assembled, and the now bubbling stew—or soup, or whatever it was properly called—was emptied into two bowls, one portion noticeably larger than the other.

He should do  _something_ , Troy realized, but he couldn't. Not because he was incapable of picking up a plate without dropping it or transferring a warm bowl to the table without burning his fingers, but because doing so required pulling his eyes away from her. And they were lingering far too long. When Cully set the cutlery beside the dishes, as though she felt the weight of his gaze, her cheeks flushed. His own face did not.

Was it even possible to go on, for this charade to continue? No, that was the wrong word to use. But...how could it? The quiet comments never came to an end, the glares were almost constant—

Her chair scraping against the floor drew Troy away from the contemplation. "Oh," he murmured, pulling his own from beneath the table. He didn't mean to sit as stiffly as he did, or as close to the edge of the chair. Glancing across the table at her again—at the soft lines of her face that his memory decorated with a smile and laughter, the blond locks of hair that fell around her cheeks just to her jaw, the gentle curves of her shoulder and chest—he had no answer for how it was to carry on if he did not rediscover his sense, only  _why_.

He had to look away while his skin remained cool, before it began to burn once more. Unable to catch her eyes again, he dipped his spoon into the stew—she had given him the bigger bowl—for a large bite. It nearly singed his tongue and scorched his throat as he swallowed.

"I don't know what you're complaining about, Cully," Troy managed, gulping an equally large mouthful of water to calm the heat. It was certainly better than wine today; Cully's presence was enough to start his mind spinning without any assistance.

"How long has it been since you had  _bœuf bourguignon_?" She just twirled her spoon in the bowl as she had earlier stirred the spatula around the pan.

"I don't know...A while." Not that it mattered; he hadn't even tasted it.

A small grin spread over her face. "Then I won't ruin it for you," she said, finally taking a bite herself.

"I'm not saying I wouldn't prefer a good curry."

"And how long since you had a good curry?" Her dislike of the dish was clear as she began to ignore it. Instead, she peeled apart a slice of bread with slender, graceful fingers, dipping one piece at a time lightly into her bowl.  _Must be out of politeness,_  Troy assumed.

"The other night," he said, still unable to look away from her. The searing late day sunshine behind her, Cully's face was beginning to disappear, illuminated only by the gleaming of that same sun on her pale skin.

"I said a  _good_  one, Gavin, not just one from the local takeaway."

"They do a fantastic chicken tikka."

She looked down, staring at the grains in the wooden tabletop. "I'm sure," she said quietly.

"Well they do." Troy took another bite; it was cooler, the flavor of beef finally appearing, but everything else was muddled.

"Just because you can eat it doesn't make it good."

"It's the best I've ever had." She rolled her eyes as she ate the last scrap of the bread she had shredded. "And it's easy," he added.

"You can be right about that."

Troy scowled, letting the spoon fall against the side of the bowl. "There's no use worrying if—" He had to stop before the rest of the sentence came:  _if it's only me._  Her face further hidden by the shadows, her expression remained invisible—but she must have heard.

Neither of them really spoke for several minutes. Cully split the salad between their two plates and Troy briefly interrupted the silence with a "Thank you", but the only sound was the clink of forks and spoons on the dishes.

"At least someone's enjoying it," Cully said finally, though the words were strained. "It's one of Mum's favorite dishes to try again and again. She's always trying to improve it."

"Are you sure?" Troy asked, lifting his spoon again. A long stem was balanced atop it, dangling limply over either side.

She laughed, the sound light and almost musical as it broke through the heavy air. "It's always something new that goes wrong."

Troy couldn't help himself as he glanced at his watch, though he did not let his gaze remain long enough to read the time. He didn't want to know. The sun behind Cully had dimmed to the early evening glare, and surely her parents would not be held up by the funeral for much longer.

"So—all your rehearsals will probably last as long as this?" he asked, almost wincing as he blurted out the first words that came to mind. Meeting Barnaby here—not just at the man's home, not just in the house, but sharing a meal with his daughter as though it was a normal course of events—was not one of the things he wanted to endure this evening. Or ever: all the chief inspector's comments and foul looks would be transformed into...well, he didn't want to imagine it before he had to.

"They could," Cully said, finally pushing her bowl aside. Much of her mother's creation remained uneaten. "But unless something  _really_  goes wrong, this was probably the longest until tech."

"Until what?" Troy asked, no longer eating, either. He wasn't willing to miss a single word she said.

"Technical week, Gavin." Propping one elbow on the table, Cully set her chin in the palm of her hand. "The last few rehearsals before opening night, when the director realizes things are never going to work."

"It can't be that bad," he said, leaning forward. She had to feel his eyes examining her face, the desperation to hold them on  _only_  her face, every curve and every angle.

She grinned again. "You'd be surprised."

"But not after—how many weeks of rehearsal do you have?"

Even as she sighed, the expression did not fade. "It's all fine on its own, but once you put—"

Until the footsteps rang on the tile in the kitchen, Troy had not noticed them. The only sound in his ears had been Cully's voice, patient as she explained what was so familiar to her and so alien to him. The moment they interrupted his concentration, his heart raced as he anticipated a nightmare that was about about to come true. But they were too light to be  _his_.

Barnaby's wife did not see him at first, even when he turned, his pulse slowing. "How was rehearsal, Cully—" she began, first seeing only her daughter, and finally noticing him. Her eyes narrowed briefly—surely she was not surprised, for his car was still in the drive—but the hidden thought in her gaze vanished almost immediately. "Hello, Gavin." Her voice was the same, even and pleasant.

"Evening, Mrs. B." His own voice almost quivered. The chief inspector's wife—Joyce; he had never used her given name aloud, but in his mind the sound of it did not frighten him as his boss's did—did not react to his nerves. She had to have noticed them.

"Hi, Mum," Cully said loudly as she took her chin from her hand, offering a small wave. "Where's Dad?"

Setting her handbag on the tiled counter, Joyce released an exhausted breath. "He's still in Midsomer Magna."

"What on earth for?" Cully asked as she leaned back in her chair, even the sharpest bones in her face disappearing into the encroaching shadow. Disappointment rushed through him.

"Searching the wood."

"Why?"

"For whoever he called me about, at a guess," Troy said.  _Might as well get ready to leave,_  he thought.  _Just a matter of time._

"I suppose so," Joyce said, nodding as she walked to the end of the table, taking a seat in the chair there. She peered over the dishes, ignoring the remnants in front of Cully. "Oh, good, you finished it."

Cully looked down before she answered. "Uh, yes."

"It was very good," Troy said in earnest. It had been one of the better meals he had eaten in a few weeks.

"I'm glad you enjoyed it, Gavin," Joyce said, sitting straighter and almost prouder.

"What happened in the wood?" Cully went on, her face flushing, the rush of blood potent enough for him to see. Trying to keep the conversation away from her comments about her mother's cooking, he supposed, though Cully's interest in current cases was sometimes endless.

"Nothing, I hope." Joyce drummed her fingers on the table, the tempo accelerating immediately. "One of Mr. Wainwright's hotel managers didn't come to the funeral. Everyone was surprised by it."

_Does no one else hate funerals?_  Troy thought, preparing to stand, pull on his jacket, and leave.  _Not enough sensible people in the world._

Cully's posture was suddenly perfect and as her face emerged from the shadow, Troy saw that the blush had vanished. "That can't be enough reason to put together a search," she said, the words harsh and clipped.

Her mother looked at her curiously, her eyebrows furrowing over the bridge of her nose. "Cully—"

"What if he just decided he wasn't up to it?" Cully continued.

"That's a horrible thing to say."

"You can't blame him."

"Even so—"

"No one likes funerals," Cully said, interrupting her mother again.

Troy loosened his fingers from the table's edge, though his arms were tenser.  _What are_ _you saying? You couldn't believe_ I  _said that._

"You should still go," Joyce said. With a sigh, she shook her head. "He was supposed to perform a Punch and Judy show at a child's birthday party afterward, too."

_Punch and Judy,_  Troy thought, shuddering.  _Wretched little things._  "He—wasn't there for that, either?" he managed after a moment. The shaking had returned to his voice.

Joyce's face was still confused, her lips pursed in thought. "No. That has Evelyn quite worried."

"Are you all right, Gavin?" Cully asked, reaching around the dishes for his hand—and pausing before she touched him, drawing her arm away before her warm and smooth skin slid over his.

"Uh, yeah." The image of the bloody puppets was enough to ignite the ridiculous worry: Mr. Punch in his belled jester's hat with his painted crimson cheeks; Judy in her bonnet and apron; and both ready to club another puppet—or one another—at a moment's provocation.

"Are you sure?"

Cully's voice could not push the puppets and their mangled words from his skull. "Yes," he said anyway, hating the frown she now wore.

"Who's Evelyn, Mum?" Cully asked, looking back to her mother. Troy wondered how pale his face was now.

"Evelyn Pope. You must remember her—she was a professor for years."

"No," Cully said, shaking her head, "I don't."

"I'm sure you've seen her perform several times." The puppets were in Troy's head again as Joyce spoke, giggling at the abuse they inflicted. "But how was rehearsal, darling?"

"It went well. I only missed a few lines, here and there."

"Well that's a good start to things." Joyce touched her daughter's hand lightly—and envy flared in Troy's chest.  _You're being ridiculous,_  he thought.

"Gavin didn't believe me," Cully said, tossing her head toward him.

Quick irritation replaced the envy. " _I_  know half that play, Cully—"

"It always happens, Gavin," Joyce said quietly. She crossed her arms in front of her body, and Troy already fought the itch in his fingers to finish what Cully had started.

_Stop,_  he thought, finally murmuring, "So I've been told." It wasn't the time, even if the new, sudden presence in the kitchen was far less threatening than the alternative. He wouldn't try to fool himself, to say that it was not the right place as well. He hadn't given a damn Saturday when he abandoned all caution, uncertain who might be observing and unable to care. But almost instantly, he had at least wrenched back control, punishing himself as he indulged in a brief kiss that hardly satiated the need. The longer embraces they shared in the evenings after the drive had been newly forbidden.

"It does seem to be a lovely cast." The words pulled him back to the kitchen, away from the memory of her soft body pressed to his—now so real that Troy felt her hot breath in his mouth. When had her presence shifted from desire to  _need_?

"Is Higgins irritating enough?" he asked, desperate to forget, if only for a second.

Once more, Cully smiled. "Of course—"

The ringing of the phone in his jacket pocket silenced her, and Troy flung a silent curse at the thing even as he struggled to pull it from one of the interior pockets. "Sorry," he said quietly as he stood and turned away from the table, answering in another moment. "Troy."

The voice at the other end was the one he anticipated. "It's Barnaby." Troy still scowled at the wall. "Meet me at the morgue."

"What is it, sir?"

"We've found a severed hand in the wood."

Incomprehensible words from men and women standing beside Barnaby filled the silence as Troy struggled to think. "A hand?" he asked, unable to believe what he had heard.

"Yes, Troy," the chief inspector said lowly, "just a hand."

"Do you—"

"Yes"—an aggravated hiss of breath broke through, almost crackling—"it probably has something to do with Gregory Chambers. Not too many other people missing who could have lost it."

"Do you want me to call round the hospitals again, sir?" He took a few measured steps alongside the wall, watching each pace. Funerals, dismemberment, and probable murder on the same day...only in Midsomer.

"No, I dare say he probably hasn't turned up."

"Well, that would make sense," Troy said quietly, looking up again at Cully's face and her inevitable curiosity. Could the last few minutes vanish and a new past permit his itching fingers to cross the gap that had remained on the table just to touch her hand? Of course not.

"I'll see you at Bullard's."

"Yes, sir."

"Is Cully done with rehearsal yet?"

Troy's hand froze; he had almost ended the call when Barnaby managed that final sentence. "Yes—sir." A few low words passed back and forth between the two women still sitting there, and he wondered how intently they were listening to his half of the conversation. "Just dropped her off." And both glanced up, Cully's eyes narrowing at the lie.

"Ran long, did it?"

Troy took a deep breath, lifting the phone away from his cheek as he did. "No, I don't think so—"

"Meet me at the morgue, Troy."

"Yes, sir—" Barnaby's end was suddenly dead, and Troy already heard a smattering of the silent accusations waiting for him as they descended the stairs to Bullard's cold, antiseptic realm.

"What is it?" Cully asked as he lifted his jacket from the back of the chair, slipping his phone into the same pocket before sliding his arms into the sleeves.

"They've probably found him—Gregory Chambers." He grimaced as he shrugged his shoulders, trying to persuade the jacket's seams to lie properly. There was no way to avoid the next sentence, not after his careless words. "Or at least part of him."

"Oh no," Joyce whispered.

"So—that's his hand?"

"Yeah, just a hand in the wood." Troy finally tightened the knot in his tie; hell already waited in the near future without inviting it.

"Is Evelyn all right?" Joyce asked, her tone worried.

"He didn't say—" God, the bloody puppets were in his mind again! Troy shivered, turning his thoughts to the severed hand, a less frightening prospect. "I've got to meet him at the morgue."

Joyce tapped her fingers against the table again, the pattern anxious and unhappy. "Did he say how long he'll be?"

"No, he didn't."

Cully stood, touching her mother's shoulder gently, pausing behind her. "It can't be too long if they've only—" She did not finish the sentence as she walked past Joyce.

"Probably not," Troy agreed quietly after a few seconds, fishing for his keys. "Nothing will be back from forensics until tomorrow at the earliest."

"Hmm." Joyce rolled her eyes, not believing a word of it.

"Mum, not even  _Dad_  could investigate this without a forensic report."

Troy hardly heard Cully, he only felt the new touch and warmth of her hand on his arm—and the imagined weight of her body pressed to his as he tangled his fingers in her hair. If she intended to destroy the ever loosening grasp he had on his sanity...she was succeeding.

"I suppose," Joyce said, still sounding unhappy.

The daydream vanished at her words, leaving only Cully's hand innocently on his arm. "Well," he managed, swallowing the thought and the burning heat still lingering in his veins, "have a good evening, Mrs. B."

"And you, Gavin." Joyce nodded a goodbye, though Troy had only a weak smile.

Cully had to steer him out of the kitchen; his feet were too heavy to lift, even as relief crashed over him. After all, it could have been far worse, and easily. The brief conversation here had revealed none of the angry yet cautious words he knew waited for him at CID. What was it, one complication that had been forgotten or at least ignored by Barnaby's wife? He almost laughed;  _that_  was too much to imagine.

Cully's hand was no longer on his sleeve: her arm was twisted around his, a change he had not noticed as they walked, their footsteps becoming quiet as the hard tile gave way to the soft carpet. It was strange: for he was always aware of her, overly so, whenever he was anywhere near her parents. Only once did Troy remember being so distracted by  _her_ , when he had seen her again almost a month ago—before the endless caution had consumed him.

Now, her fingers were tightening around his palm and her pace was slowing as they approached the front door, holding him back. He glanced to her face for a moment, and her expression was distant, almost lost in thought. No use in asking her, Troy knew. If she wanted to share, she would; if she did not, nothing would draw it out. But there was always tomorrow to hear it, and the day after that.


	20. Chapter 19: Indicators

**Chapter 19: Indicators**

Cully felt his breathing change the closer they came to the front door: it became easier and calmer in the dim room. His arm had been tense when she first touched it, only to relax once they left the kitchen and, perhaps responding to the pressure of her own hand, his palm had tightened around hers without hesitation.  _That—went well,_ she thought, smiling.

It had not been planned in the least, but her mother's arrival had not been  _unexpected_. Perhaps the only surprise was her father's absence. All for the best, Cully supposed; she was still not ready to trust his reaction. Yet it had to come, didn't it, and she knew it would be an unpleasant one. She  _hoped_  it would come, and the realization almost knocked her breath away. It was too much right now, too much to consider, too much to want...

_Want?_  A shiver ran through her limbs.

Though Cully had thrust all the confusion beneath the mask of a practiced actress, her mother's response had, in fact, mystified her. She had asked no irritated questions, muttered no snide comments, and worn no angry glares. But...why? In the face even of her mother's calm presence, Cully had watched Gavin stiffen and heard his words at first slow with apprehension, then relax.

_Please stop worrying, Gavin,_  she thought, disentangling her fingers from his warm grasp to open the front door.  _They won't bite—at least Mum won't._

"What?" he asked, stepping over the threshold first. Her gaze must have been distant for a moment.

"Nothing," Cully said, the smile on her face finally weakening as she followed him, closing the door behind herself; the  _thud_  was distant. "Just thinking." How many times had they stood here, sometimes closer than they were now, talking and laughing? She had lost count—but each of those moments was easier and less muddled than this one.

Gavin was peering at the drive, squinting as the sun gleamed harshly on the windows of his car; she thought she heard him sigh. "It's hard for you to get a break, isn't it?" she asked quietly.

"Sometimes it feels like I've never had one." He touched her hand lightly again.

"Never?"

His fingers—rough and calloused in many spots—ran from her wrist to her knuckles, tracing the bones and moving almost delicately. "And that I never will," he murmured.

"But  _never_ , Gavin?"

"Fine," he said, shrugging his shoulders. "Almost never."

Cully drew her hand away, slipping it into her back pocket. "That's not true and you know it."

"After the last couple of weeks, that's what it feels like."

_That's the truth of it,_  Cully thought. "So long as you don't miss opening night—any of it."

He stepped back, settling his weight on one foot. "You know I won't after learning half the play."

"You've left  _early_  before."

Gavin lifted a hand to his brow, shielding his eyes from the sun as he continued to look over the drive—away from her. "I didn't want to, Cully."

"I know—"

"And you know who to talk to about that," he added, the keys rattling in his other hand.

"It's not your fault, Gavin," she said quickly, "I understand that. I really do." The lifetime of memories sped through her mind again, the expected absences and sudden disappearances. Even now, the memory of her fourth birthday party—another of her father's absences, this one  _unexpected—_ still held a bite. "It just gets a little old."

"Sorry." His hand fell, and he looked at her again, almost guiltily. "It does for me, too." He opened his mouth, but stopped—then continued. "I'll be there."

"How long do you think you'll be tonight?" She had pulled her hand from her pocket without noticing, crossing her arms.

"I don't know," he said lowly. His skin was already sallow, anticipating the exhaustion. "Why?"

"I'm just curious."

"Are you ever not?" With another rattle of metal, the keys dropped into his pocket once more.

_You shouldn't keep him much longer._  "I like hearing about your work," Cully said, not really caring about holding him up. Whoever that hand had belonged to was still dead or dying—probably—and one more policeman would not make a difference. She shoved aside the voice in her skull chiding her for such a wretched thought.

"Thought you'd be sick of it by now," he said.

"Why would I be?" She flicked a speck of non-existent lint from his jacket, her right hand sitting lightly on his shoulder. "Besides, it's something new."

"Well, I'd rather still be in there talking with you," Gavin said quietly, now clearing his throat, "instead of heading out to Midsomer Magna."

"No matter what?" she asked, tilting her head.  _Even with Mum?_  But why was that surprising? A few moments after her mother had come into the kitchen, Gavin had forgotten to worry and had been given no reason to remember.

Now, he coughed before he spoke again, almost as though he had heard her second question. He blinked heavily. "That's what I meant—"

Gavin hadn't even finished his sentence when she pressed her mouth to his. His lips were warm and melting into hers, his muscles loosening beneath her palm. One of his arms snaked around her shoulders, pulling her closer, and his other hand fell to her waist. His palm moved to the small of her back, taking the fabric of her blouse with it—and her belly twisted again as his fingers met her bare skin, first grazing it and then sliding up along her spine.

Her free hand clutched his shirt, curling around the crisp cloth to touch the base of his throat, trying to hold tighter, to keep him  _here_. He couldn't go...but there was no choice, Cully knew as she pulled away, opening her mouth for a shaky gasp for air. He couldn't leave and abandon her to the sudden burn pulsing through her entire body—one she hoped was clear on her face as she took her left hand away.

"Cully," he whispered, close enough for his breath to touch her cheek, "I can't—" The warmth of his hand on her back vanished and she waited for his face to flush. "I can't stay any longer."

_There isn't a choice!_  she reminded herself, swallowing against the heat that was still rising, now enveloping her completely. "Go on," Cully said after a moment, giving him another brief kiss and then stepping away, forcing his arm to release her shoulders. It was only one step—and a small one—but the distance was suddenly vast and her skin still smoldered where she had touched him and his fingers had lingered on her body. "See you tomorrow?"

Gavin narrowed his eyes, pursing his lips. His cheeks remained pale. "Unless I get held up by something."

"Then don't be."

"I never try to be," he said quietly, glancing to her hand, still resting on his shoulder.

"I know." She drew her hand away, her arm listless and heavy when it fell to her side. "But I'll  _talk_  to you tomorrow, right?"

"Sure." One of his fingers brushed her face, running over a patch of still warm skin before he kissed her again. It was quick, yet certain—a goodbye. "I'll try to give you a lift." Tearing his gaze from hers, he turned away, rushing down the front walk as he searched for his keys once more. Gavin glanced back as he opened the car door—and again, just before he closed it. The engine growled as he turned the ignition, and he had the car out of the drive and down the street in a few seconds.

A few months ago, she would have felt new anger kindling. Despite the last few minutes standing before the front door, his departure was almost—rude. No, that was the wrong word. Abrupt and hurried, but not rude. Like he had been afraid to stay.

Cully nearly collapsed onto the front step, her lungs suddenly exhausted and desperate for air, and she folded steady hands together atop shaking knees. It would only be a day, perhaps two if this new case quickly spiraled out of control. Closing her eyes against the still glaring sunlight, Cully pressed her forehead to her hands, taking in and releasing one slow breath after another. She hadn't seen it happen, hadn't thought it could happen. All the anger, the resentment—and here she was again. No, this was  _worse_.

Two months ago, she had thought of him, even missed him at times. Then, he had been a vague and almost distant memory, and now...The thought of not seeing him for just a day was already driving a dull ache. It was ridiculous. She'd hardly spoken to him—let alone seen him—the week of her audition, and this mere possibility—a day!—was already  _far worse_. She inhaled again, holding it for a few seconds before she let it go, the warm air dancing over her fingers.

She hadn't  _wanted_  it to happen. That afternoon—how many weeks had passed, three, four?—she had seen an old friend, wanted to talk about the past few months of their lives. And later, she had only meant to offer the apology he deserved, nothing more! A quiet laugh rose in her throat as she lifted her face, immediately closing her eyes.  _Nothing more...Well, that means a lot now, doesn't it?_  Standing quickly and clenching her eyes as she waited for the rushing blood to return to her head, Cully shivered again. God, she was in too deep for any easy solution.

Heavy footsteps brought her back into the house and she missed the door handle when she reached for it the first time. The click of the lock almost made her jump. _What's wrong with you?_  Cully asked herself, shaking her head.  _What are you worried about, that you care?_  Again, her stomach twisted into a knot, suddenly throbbing with a renewed heat. But that was it: she  _did_  care—more than she had ever wanted to, she realized as she walked across the front room. Far more than she should, more than any one else would think possible. The knot loosened at that thought, at the  _acknowledgment_. She drew one final, deep breath before she stepped into the kitchen.

"That was a while," her mother said, her fingers wrapped around a steaming cup of tea.

"Um...sorry," Cully said, nearly praying that her face was not flushed as she stood beside the entrance from the corridor. "We just—talked for a few minutes."

"Is something wrong?"

"No, nothing," Cully said, the words rushing out. "We just talked and I needed another minute to think, that's all."

"All right." Her mother cleared her throat before lifting her cup for another sip. "I hope Tom doesn't keep him too long. You know your father: he won't be home for hours."

"Probably." Cully knew she would hear nothing more from Gavin at whatever ungodly hour the investigation ceased. Their conversations were finished for the day, even though she would have eagerly answered her mobile. "I'm sorry about what I said earlier, Mum. About the funeral."

"Everyone's allowed an opinion, Cully. Even if they're not really polite."

"I guess," she said quietly, smiling to herself. After all, it wasn't  _her_  opinion.

"It was...nice to see Gavin again."

Her mother's words were slow, almost measured and calculated, and Cully stiffened before they were finished. It might have  _gone well_ , but in spite of the calm, neither she nor Gavin had ever been entirely at ease sitting at the table. Whilst his face had exposed his nerves at first, she had completely buried her own beneath the same practiced mask that had once concealed her anger. "He's always good enough to bring me home."

"I know." Another sip of tea. "I'm glad someone enjoyed what was left over."

"I think he was just happy to have something besides a takeaway." It wasn't even  _that_ , Cully knew. He would have been happy sitting at the table with nothing—just like her.

"You should think about having him around for dinner again."

_God, no, not with Dad. I couldn't do that to Gavin,_  Cully thought as she pulled a chair away from the table—the one he had been sitting in. "Mum—"

"It might be  _nice_ ," her mother continued, looking directly at her, raising her eyebrows, "since he is bringing you home every day."

Cully rolled her eyes as she leaned back, crossing her legs. "So I could upset Dad?"

"He's trying to be better about it, dear. You know he worries about you—he always has—"

"I would be worried for Gavin," she muttered as she frowned. Gavin's words that night were impossible to forget, even when she winced at her own:  _"Does he not bother you about anything?"_  The answer she had never managed to give him was  _"No"_. Whatever words had passed between them, she remained ignorant of them, as she believed she always would.

"He's  _trying_ , Cully," her mother said quietly.

Cully traced a circle on her knee, staring as her fingertip went round and round again. Why did he have to make it so difficult? "He could try a little harder."

"It's not easy for him, you know."

"Him?"

"Yes, Cully."

But that—couldn't be right.  _Just Dad?_  "Mum—"

"I told him he shouldn't worry so much," her mother continued, reaching out and touching Cully's hand lightly.

"But, what—" She looked up to see her mother smile, though a few frown lines surrounded it, as if she was remembering something.  _But why else would she have sat there like she did?_  Cully asked herself.  _She_ has  _to care—_  "Oh," Cully whispered, the flush she had feared before creeping across her skin.  _She can't_ mean _that. But isn't that what you want?_  "I'm not sure he listened."

"He probably will, in the end." She took her hand back, once again lifting her tea cup to her mouth for another sip. "Do you need to go through your lines again?"

"Uh, sure," Cully said quietly, twisting in her chair as she stretched one arm to the edge of the kitchen table for her bag. "I did have a couple spots of trouble," she added, unzipping the main compartment to remove the already battered book. As she fumbled through the contents, staring at her pens and notebook and wallet rather more intently than necessary, her pulse slowed.  _God,_  she thought, pulling the book out and thumbing past the preface to the middle of the first act,  _what would_ Dad _have said? Well, maybe nothing, but he wouldn't need to._

"What did you want to review?"

Cully nearly jumped when her mother spoke, so quickly buried in her own thoughts. "Act One," she said, flipping through a few more pages before turning the book around and passing it across the table.

Holding the book a short distance away, her mother's eyes widened, dancing over the text and pencil marks. "The director  _did_  give you a lot of notes."

"He's always been thorough like that."

"It's better than leaving things unanswered, isn't it?"

Cully almost laughed, for the man had already changed his mind at least a dozen times. "It is. Could you start from Clara's line, near the bottom?"

Her mother pressed a finger to the page. "The Daughter?"

"Yes."

With a deep breath, her mother began. " 'And what about us? Are we to stay here all night in this draught, with next to nothing on. You selfish pig—' " She stopped, her eyes skipping to the next line, now taking on the role of Freddy. " 'Oh, very well: I'll go, I'll go.' " Cully had to hold back another laugh: her mother's voice didn't change for the new character, either.

" 'Nah then,' " Cully began, still struggling to torture the words as she had to, " 'Freddy: look where you're goin', dear.' "

" 'Sorry.' "

Her mother was no actress and never had been, but few people with whom she had ever read lines were worse than Gavin. " 'There's manners f' yer!' " When they first read through this scene, interspersed with his wooden renditions of each character—'The Mother', 'The Daughter', Freddy, and all the others—were numerous pauses for him to scowl at  _her_  lines on the page and mutter,  _"What the hell does that_ say _?"_

After a minute or so, Cully stood, the stage directions only partially coming back to her; she ignored what was uncertain.  _Best not to memorize it wrong,_  she thought, holding her arms still as the director's third vision blended with his second. But even without those directions, the small problems from earlier in the day vanished. Though many of the moves awaited clarification the next day—and all of them remained under the threat of alteration—each line was clearer in her mind as the other actors' voices spoke in tandem with her mother's.

And Gavin's.

By the time Colonel Pickering and Professor Higgins introduced themselves by name and her mother had long since drained her tea cup, Cully waved her hand, saying, "I think that's all I need, Mum."

"You've got it from there?"

"At least in Act One." As she sat again, her mother handed the book back to her. Even this early, a few of her words had smudged, still legible but no longer clear and precise.

"Will you want to read any of the other acts later?"

"No, I don't think so." The pages fluttering closed, Cully dropped the play onto the table. "Mum," she said, tapping her fingers on the cover, "can I ask you something?"

"Of course," her mother said, picking up one of the bowls and stacking it inside the other. Cully saw her own half-full one on top.

"You said Dad worries."

"He does. Sometimes." Now she added the empty bread plate and salad bowl to the bottom of the pile, then collected the silverware, nestling them into whatever free space remained on the plate. "Fathers always do."

"Don't mothers?" Cully asked quietly, one of her feet tapping as well.

"You know I do."

"What about?"

"Cully, you're an adult," her mother said, standing with the dishes in her hands. "I don't worry about all of your choices anymore."

"Then why won't he stop?" Cully asked, even quieter. The book was almost spinning from the force of her fingers.

Walking around the table to the counter, her mother set the dishes in the sink, quickly turning back around. "Your father sees the worst of—people every day."

" _People_?" She almost spat the word out.  _You mean he thinks he sees the worst of Gavin._  He was different at CID, different when a nasty murder—or burglary—demanded his presence in the far corners of the county, but could he be so different?  _No._

"You know what I mean."

Another deep, slow breath. "I'm sorry, Mum, you weren't here for—"

"You don't argue very much, Cully." Her mother took her seat again, pressing her palm to Cully's hand, holding it and the book still. "But with his job, if he didn't worry more than most..."

"He wouldn't be Dad."

"No, he wouldn't."

"But this isn't work, Mum," Cully continued, fidgeting in her chair and pulling her hand away.

"You know him—there isn't a difference."

"No, there isn't, is there?" Cully twisted her mouth into a frown. "There should be."

Her mother set her elbows on the table's edge. "Are you sure you don't want to read over part of Act Two?" she asked quickly.

"I'm sure," Cully said as she stood. "But thanks." Taking her bag, she tucked the play away again. It had been strange enough reading Act One with—someone else. _God, that's childish,_  she thought as she turned, walking out of the kitchen. For the moment, she wanted to keep those readings between  _them._


	21. ACT III: Chapter 20: Trying to Keep Pace

**ACT III**

"For those who believe, no explanation is necessary; for those who do not believe, no explanation is possible."  
—Franz Werfel

**Chapter 20: Trying to Keep Pace**

The cup of tea he always took in the early morning was usually soothing. Before departing for a typical day of questions and—hopefully—answers, it was a moment of calm. This morning, Barnaby was not tasting it as he drank it quicker than usual, the hot and milky liquid burning his throat. It was too soon for indigestion, but his stomach was churning with acid.

Most mornings, his quiet ritual was performed in the kitchen whilst the day's paper lay across the table, offering up the latest news and gossip; the latter was too often mistaken for the former. Today, he gulped the tea in his study once it cooled slightly, hidden from the fresh sunlight and already in a darkening mood as he sat at his desk and ignored the paper. He was unprepared to face his wife or daughter after the previous day. And there was his stomach again, burning and angry. If they wished to indulge in madness, Barnaby intended to let them do so on their own; too many other things required his attention.

Though he had never expected it to be enjoyable on the whole, yesterday had descended into something more like a mystery novel than real life. Dame Agatha Christie might appreciate the elements: a funeral, a missing heir, and finally a severed hand that, it was all but certain, had very recently received blood and nourishment from that missing heir. As far as working days went, it had been normal in length, if not following the normal schedule. While waiting at the morgue, though, he had wondered if it would ever end—or at least if his sergeant would ever arrive.

* * *

The white wall of the morgue was cold against his back—even through his jacket—and the place stank of disinfectant. Well, perhaps  _stank_  was the wrong word, but the scent was ubiquitous. His arms crossed over his chest, Barnaby folded the fingers of each hand into his elbows. Awareness of the chill and the smell always faded after a time, and he had long ago stopped grumbling to himself about it. A warm morgue would reek of decay, a wretched smell that traveled together with the loss of evidence. All other things equal, he preferred the morgue as it was.

As far as cases went, this was not an auspicious beginning. At the moment, he had—officially—only a missing person to investigate. But no one would believe it to be just that, not with a single, cleanly severed hand on one of Bullard's slabs. Suzanna Chambers had both arrived at and departed from the morgue already, remaining just long enough to glance at the hand and hopefully identify it. Barnaby had not spoken to her since they had both seen that hand lying on the leaf litter, grey and spattered with mud. She had ducked into the examination room and left without a word, though Bullard must have gotten a few out of her.

Something about her was troubling him, though the suspicion was nebulous and vague, an idea he could not force into any particular shape. It had begun in her kitchen behind the hotel as she rummaged through the piles of folders and files. Evelyn Pope and her niece—Clarice Opperman—had been obviously concerned by Gregory Chambers' absence, but Suzanna Chambers had been merely annoyed, ready to fling pages about looking for a particular note or report regarding the hotel. And then in the wood, knowing full well that her husband had not been seen since the morning, her expression had still been free of the worry he had expected. The  _worry_  had been clear, but it was...wrong, somehow, as though it was an inappropriate worry.

Hardly enough to be going on, really. But it remained there, both scenes playing themselves through his mind as he stared across the morgue, tracing the edges of the concrete blocks in the wall. They were scrubbed and almost brilliantly white—sterile and flat—and the metal counters and sinks and tables set before them gleamed. Even the tiled floor gave off a chill, though this one did not touch the skin.

Barnaby had checked his watch twice—he allowed approximately five minutes between those glances—and was ready to look a third time before Troy's footsteps and the movement of the latch on the morgue door shattered the silence, the final silence of death. "You took your time," the chief inspector said, pushing his shoulders away from the frigid wall.

"It was the traffic, sir," his sergeant answered, stepping forward to avoid the swing of the door on its smooth, automatic hinges.

"This late in the day?"

"I got caught behind an accident," Troy said quickly, his eyes running around the room. Like every officer in Causton CID, the man was familiar with the morgue—Bullard's domain, a kingdom of the dead awaiting interrogation. And like almost every one of them, Barnaby knew Troy hated it.

Not without reason, of course. Even the most hardened investigator sometimes paled at the sight of a body laid open, skin and flesh peeled away to reveal the secrets of organs, the paths of knives, and the trajectories of bullets. "I had to call Bullard in to take a look at things," Barnaby added, finally checking his watch once more. The hour hand had passed eight already, forecasting another late night.

"I know, sir." The man was fidgeting, shifting from one foot to another, one hand rising to adjust the knot in his tie. A hand with twitching fingers that only ceased when his arm fell back to his side.

"I don't want to keep him here longer than I have to," Barnaby said, his eyes drawn away from Troy as the door to the examination room now opened, and Bullard emerged in his green scrubs and hat. "George."

Still standing in the doorway, the pathologist was almost amused as he waited. Barnaby was uncertain of Bullard's age—that was an especially inappropriate question to ask a work colleague—but the man exuded a youthful enthusiasm for his work. It was probably another reason so many officers were put off by this place, the man's relentless good humor in the face of death. "You two always get the strange ones," Bullard said.

"Seems that way," Troy said quietly.

"Never by choice," Barnaby interjected, taking the first step to follow Bullard.

The examination had been swift but thorough; after all, how long did it take to tease out the secrets of a single hand? The pathologist had not been called to the wood—the scene had already been disturbed by the sharp-nosed dog and SOCO had documented what remained—and so had turned his attention to the lone limb some time ago when it had been delivered to the morgue.

"I hope not." Bullard's hand was pressed to the outer edge of the metal door, still waiting for them to enter the examination room itself. "You'd probably have some explaining to do to the Chief Superintendent."

"Luck of the draw."

"I bet no one else complains." A grin broke through the older man's lined face. "There's not much to say now, Tom, but this was no accident."

"Severed hands usually aren't," Troy murmured, now following the pathologist as well.

"Yes,  _thank you_ , Troy," Barnaby said as Bullard walked away from the door, the chief inspector stepping neatly over the threshold from one set of cold scrubbed tile to another. If nothing else, he could always count on Troy to state the obvious. And bloody hell, why was he so  _quiet_?

"Might be one if there's a combine harvester involved," Bullard added. "But you don't need to worry about that possibility with this one."

The rubber soles of Bullard's shoes were silent, but Barnaby and Troy's clicked on the tile; the sound might drive the men and women of Causton's morgue mad over the course of a day, interrupting the otherwise silent world they inhabited. The room was more than half empty—almost plain—but for the lights mounted on a stand beside the examination table in the center of the room. Both were necessary, providing two key portions of any investigation: the autopsy and its documentation. In the glare of the lamp, the gleaming metal table was nearly barren, the flat papery white sheet atop it tiny in comparison to the available space. Another lay over it, concealing a small mound.

Just a hand.

Bullard looked at the hidden shape for a brief moment as he pulled the sheet back, the hand lying palm down. "Mrs. Chambers identified the ring on the finger as his." In the harsh, artificial light, the skin was not quite so grey, but the fingers were bloated from the lowest joint to the dirt encrusted nails, and the sudden end of the wrist was almost comical. Dissection  _here_  was the norm; rarely did bodies come to Bullard after already meeting the knife.

Bending forward a little, Barnaby peered at the extremity, though just out of the corner of his eye he could see Troy still standing straight. Turning his head slightly, Barnaby caught his sergeant's ill expression and ashen complexion. Almost understandable—it was hardly a pleasant sight—but not tolerable.

"We'll have to wait for fingerprints for a definite ID," Bullard continued, fixing Barnaby with a direct glance, "but there's little doubt we're looking at the right hand of Gregory Chambers. So, my guess is that the hands were removed to hamper identification. Probably the head as well. Somehow, this got left behind."

"It couldn't have been severed during the course of the murder itself, could it?" Barnaby asked, lifting his chin.

"I don't think so." With an extended finger, Bullard pointed to the wound, tracing its obvious path through the bones and tendons. "It was a hacksaw that was used."

Troy spoke again, his voice still low. "Not a classic murder weapon."

Barnaby suppressed a quiver of irritation.  _Always_  the obvious, and it remained one of his sergeant's most significant stumbling blocks in any investigation. How could you expect to see through a criminal's lies when you only saw what you were supposed to see? Then again, Troy's ability to hide his own thoughts was often spotty. Too frequently, Barnaby knew, even those trained to know better saw themselves reflected in the others before them. "Well, thank you, George," Barnaby finally said, straightening his back.

Bullard was made for his profession, somehow able to smile again as he draped the white cover over the hand once more as Barnaby and Troy walked away, silent until the door to the examination room swung closed behind them. In the anteroom, they paused, Troy thrusting his hands into his pockets.

"This will be a mess, sir," Troy said finally, "if we have to look for another hand, a head,  _and_  the body."

"It does complicate matters," Barnaby said, closing his eyes to consider the limited evidence again. One hand, cleanly severed though not thoroughly drained of blood. And the timing: murdered in the hours before reading the will. Why then, why not any of a hundred other moments? Another time and place must have been possible—and if not, what were they to make of that? "Well, at least we know one thing already."

"What?"

Opening the door to the hallway outside of the morgue to a sudden burst of tepid, blessedly unsanitized air, Barnaby continued. "We're looking for someone cold-blooded who is familiar with anatomy."

Troy caught the door, closing it with his hand rather than allowing it to slam itself shut. "You think he's done this before? Like a serial killer, sir?" His face twisted with a suppressed smile of disbelief.

"I doubt it. Don't think I had a moment to tell you this, but remember it, Troy. Gregory Chambers was an employee of a hotel with a large estate. An estate with gamekeepers."

Troy's brow furrowed as they walked, mounting one set of stairs after another, drawing ever closer to the surface of the earth with its now faded sun and stifling warmth. "That would make sense." He paused as they traversed the final corridor before emerging into mid-evening's twilight. "But it's a jump from animals."

"That is very true," Barnaby said, already searching for his car keys. "Do you have another idea?"

"Uh—no, sir," Troy said. "Not yet."

"Cleanly severing a hand with a hacksaw..." Doing so that close to the murder, the body would still have been warm, felt almost  _alive_. "Nerves of steel, too."

"There must have been a hell of a lot of blood."

"Probably." Barnaby slid a finger along the car key in his hand, then the one to his house, then back to the car. Another long night, certainly. He knew Joyce had stopped hearing his apologies years ago, though he always offered them as a matter of course. "We won't get much more done here tonight, Troy." He heard Troy's quick inhalation, what must have certainly been relief, soon to be short-lived. "Best to get out to the hotel, though. We'll start to set up the interviews for tomorrow. I'll meet you there."

The car park was not quite abandoned—CID never truly emptied at any time on any day—but each automobile was easier to pick out, and Barnaby recognized Troy's immediately, several stalls away from his own sedan. He had taken a few steps to his car before he noticed the silence behind him and turned back.

Troy had not moved from the door, like he intended to become an obstacle for another man or woman hoping to leave. What Barnaby had thought was a washing out by the glare of the morgue lamps still remained, and the pale skin revealed a face that was neither unhappy nor disappointed, but...resigned.

"Something on your mind?" Barnaby asked, slipping the key into the driver's door of his vehicle.

Troy shook his head and finally took a first few steps across the tarmac as he searched for his keys in one of his jacket pockets. "No, sir."

* * *

_That,_  Barnaby thought as he lifted his cup,  _was rubbish_. Even without another word of explanation from Troy, Barnaby knew very well that there was never a moment now when  _nothing_  was on his sergeant's mind. Troy had been, as expected, later getting to the hotel than the traffic had warranted, if only by a few minutes. The phone call the man must have made before leaving—similar to the one Barnaby himself had made upon turning off his car's engine in the hotel car park—must have been brief. A simple apology about the late evening.

His own had been made to Joyce, and Troy's? To Cully, of course.

Taking another sip of his tea, the chief inspector shuddered; it was now stone cold. As he stood, Barnaby turned his face up for a moment. The house around him remained silent; after all these years, he was still the earliest riser in his household.

In the kitchen mercifully empty, he hastily switched the kettle on. He had brought the paper with him, and as the water began to hiss and gurgle, he glanced over the headline again.  _"Hand Found In Midsomer Magna,"_  it read. Then below, in smaller letters,  _"Identity Still Unknown"_. That much was good, at least. Though little doubt was left, Barnaby was loath to feed the vultures of the  _Echo_  more than necessity demanded, especially when the details they craved had yet to be written in a police file.

The kettle clicked and turned itself off, and Barnaby flung a new teabag into his cup, pouring the hot water over it with care. As the liquid darkened, he turned his attention back to the article, scanning the text.  _"Police still in the wood...No other body parts discovered...No information released as yet..."_

_At least they got_ that _right,_  Barnaby thought, digging a spoon from the drawer to remove the paper sachet from his newly born tea. One could count on the local rag for many things, but accuracy was not one of them. After adding a dollop of milk and small spoon of sugar to his cup, Barnaby retreated again to the safety of his study.

Sitting once more, the green shape caught his eye. On the corner of his desk, wearing a thin layer of dust, the bloody cactus sat innocently as it always did, its leaves still drab green beneath the glistening coat of sharp needles. At least Troy's attempt at a housewarming gift had been well meant. After almost a year, Barnaby still found the thing as useless as the first day he had seen it. What good was a plant that simply wanted to be ignored? Surely no real gardeners wanted plants that were so self-sufficient?

A sip from this new cup of tea was scalding, and Barnaby set it aside for a minute to cool, his gaze still on the cactus. His first thought had been to dispose of the thing after a few weeks of polite upkeep. Cully had appeared none too fond of it either, but Joyce, for whatever reason, had insisted upon both its remaining in the house and its banishment to that far corner.

Barnaby knew his wife well—after almost thirty years, how could he not? But for the past few weeks, she had been a source of near confusion for him. And there was no use in saying anything about it.

* * *

When he finally opened the front door after close to a dozen hours away from home, Joyce was in the sitting room with a paperback novel, more than half of the pages tucked behind the fingers of her left hand. "Hello, dear," she said, looking up when he closed and locked the door. "You finally made it?"

The sound that escaped his throat was deep and almost disgusted, and he shuddered with the exhaustion as well.

"That bad?" she asked, sliding to the next cushion on the couch.

"Dismembered bodies are never good, Joyce." He did not sit but almost collapsed into the space she had created for him. The front room was only half-lit by the lamp now at his side, and the shadows before him mutated from the vague, bulky shapes of tables and chairs and bookshelves into a man he had never met and whose face he had yet to see even in a photograph—Gregory Chambers. Strange, that, the man's wife and his colleagues neglecting such a simple action. But now the shadows transformed into a grotesque imitation of the man with his severed hands and head sitting neatly on his abdomen, and then to another hidden face about which even less was known. The murderer.

With a final glance at her book—the page number, Barnaby assumed—Joyce let the covers fall closed. "You found something besides the hand?"

"No, it's still all we've got..." His voice faded.  _The hand?_  Midsomer was a small county and news traveled quickly, but never so late in the evening. And, more to the point, who knew who could mention such things? His own phone call to Joyce had been void of that sort of information, had really only been a comment about how late he would be arriving home.  _Of course._

"Did you tell Evelyn yet?" she asked.

Barnaby ignored her question for the moment.  _SOCO, Bullard, the witnesses, and the police._  He pressed the heel of his hands to his eyes, rubbing at the weight of the past several hours. That short list made the answer obvious.

"Tom?"

"How long was Troy here?" he asked, dropping his hands to his thighs. Every limb was heavy.

"I don't know," she answered quietly, letting the small book fall to her side.

"Joyce..."

"He was here when Woody dropped me off," she said after a moment.

"And when was that?" Barnaby formed each word cautiously, not wanting the irritation to give way to naked anger.

"I don't know for certain." She touched his hand, rubbing her smaller fingers over his knuckles, finding and releasing a few patches of tension. "Seven or so, I think."

"Ah." Until the last few, none of his daughter's rehearsals could run that long. So, he decided, there must have been an extended dalliance over tea or coffee after it ended. Those were occurring far too often for his liking.

"They were just talking about the rehearsal, Tom," Joyce added, now wrapping her hand around his.

"Of course."

"He put in a lot of work helping her—"

"I know," Barnaby said quickly. By god, did he know!

"And it's very kind of him to bring her home every evening."

"Call it 'kind' if you want to."

Her hand left his, and she reached for her book again. "I don't know when they arrived," his wife said, pushing herself forward like she was ready to stand, to finally go to bed, "but they were eating dinner when I got in."

Barnaby had to repeat the word and he sat straighter. "Dinner?"

She rose, glancing back at him in the dim light. "Just the leftover  _bœuf bourguignon_."

"Dinner..." he said again, needing to repeat it once more to begin to understand it. Not just coffee in the back garden after hours of reading lines—he could categorize it as merely a gracious gesture and a moment of madness—but dinner!

"At least it's out of the fridge." She was almost amused. Again.

One of his wife's culinary experiments had vanished—but for everything else going on, he would have thanked Troy for the respite. As it was, he held back an oath before muttering, "I'm not going to say anything."

Shifting her book to her other hand, Joyce reached out for his to help him stand as well. "I know it's late," she said as he fought his aching muscles to gain his feet, "and I'm not sure what I've got, but do you want something to eat?"

Barnaby forced a smile as a growl of hunger rose in his throat. "Of course, dear," he said, trying not to imagine what else remained in the refrigerator.

* * *

That was all Joyce would hear him say about this:  _nothing_. Anything else drew an irritated glare, a disapproving sigh, or yet another reminder that Cully could make her own decisions. He was well aware of that, for her adolescence had ensured it. Yet...

Barnaby shuddered as he tried to finish the second cup of tea; it was almost cold again.  _Might as well be off,_  he thought, pushing back his chair. His stomach grumbled, demanding something more than tea as he picked up the cup. Though he was to meet Troy at the hotel, it was early enough to drop in at the station for both a spot of breakfast in the canteen and any reports that might have been finished.

Another hour or two, then, before he clapped eyes on his sergeant again. Another hour or two for the growing annoyance—no,  _anger—_ to remain on the edge of his mind instead of fighting for attention. It would fade as the details of the case came in, as all parts of his life did, but for the moment, there was not enough information in the world about Gregory Chambers and the other denizens of the Easterly Grange Hotel to distract him.

As he swirled the cup in his hand, the milky brew spun in a whirlpool that rose along the sides, once or twice threatening to spill over the lip. His foot tapping impatiently—eager to be gone, to focus on the case—Barnaby stretched out his arm and dumped the remaining tea into the cactus's pot.

Down to the dregs and the tiny pool of half-melted sugar.


	22. Chapter 21: Improving Visibility

**Chapter 21: Improving Visibility**

Barnaby had looked over the fingerprint report several times since it landed on his desk, more from habit than curiosity. Little in it was surprising. "No question about it now," he said. "Gregory Chambers' fingerprints are all over that brush."

At his desk a few feet away, Troy glanced up from his paperwork. Since their return from Midsomer Magna's fete and wood an hour ago, most of his sergeant's time had been spent with those reports. "How long on the blood, sir?"

"Tomorrow at the earliest." The forensic lab had produced this report much quicker than Barnaby had anticipated, probably as a result of its connection to such a gristly murder case. How often was Midsomer the background for a scene of dismemberment? More often than its population might dictate, but not often enough to be commonplace, thank god. Morbid enthusiasm was behind the speed, he decided; even the forensic team was occasionally intrigued. If they applied the same curiosity to the burglar still crisscrossing the county—another break-in had occurred last night and Sergeant Brierley had been assigned as the lead investigator for the moment—perhaps that case would be going somewhere.

Speed was an invaluable asset to the present case. With eager technicians at the helm of machines with bells and whistles, perhaps the bloodstained leaves would yield their secrets quickly and completely.

Unlikely. "Probably longer," Barnaby added, a dreary weight hanging on the words. He drank a sip of coffee from the half full mug beside his hand. Today, at least, it was potable, the oil slick held at bay. To be honest, hoping for any conclusive result regarding the blood was a touch mad. The stains had lain out in the open for days, exposed to the elements and any inquisitive creature with a nose for the stuff. If the report contained anything more specific than "human",  _that_  would surprise him.

"But it can't be anyone else's, can it?" Paper shuffled as Troy moved to the next report. Their paperwork was completed in a maddening mixture of formats, some on the blasted computer system and some by hand to be later entered into the blasted computer system. On the whole, Barnaby still preferred scribbling the information in pen.

"Probably not," he said as he took another mouthful of coffee, slipping the pages back into the case file. "That wouldn't make any sense."

Pushing his chair back, Troy threw down his pen. "So that's where he was killed, do you think?"

"Yes. It's a lot closer to Abbot's Pool than where the hand was found." Only a few hundred yards away and a much more convenient location for the murder. "Just a matter of time before they find the body in there."

Troy stood, taking a few impatient steps behind his desk, like he was attempting to think. "Even removing the hands and head, sir, it's risky just leaving it there."

"Don't think there was any other choice, Troy. What  _else_  were they going to do with it?"

Troy turned, retracing his path. "So you still think it's connected to the hotel?"

"Do you have another motive?" Barnaby asked, finishing off the bitter remnants of his coffee. "And who—apart from someone who had to be at the funeral—would be so pressed for time?"

Troy's brow furrowed, his mind lingering on the list of suspects. "Still leaves all of them."

"Yes."

" _Including_  Annie and Tyson."

"Troy, you really must learn to keep an open mind."

Despite Annie Tyson's certain alibi at the time of Kenneth Gooders' death—being held in custody tended to be one—Troy still clung to the belief that she was involved somehow. Barnaby had not argued too forcefully against his sergeant's mumbled complaints yesterday afternoon about her bail. Any time for grumbling had been consumed by sorting through the first deluge of information on Kenneth Gooders' death; the review had taken the rest of the day and much of the evening. The final stretch had brought the lab's confirmation of Colin Salter's mycological knowledge:  _Amanita virosa_ , Destroying Angel.

It was past seven when Barnaby had found the first opportunity to ring Joyce with a quick apology for the late day. Troy, his desk buried beneath piles of photographs and initial reports that he had ceased attempting to organize, had made no phone calls at all. What had happened after they departed from CID for the night—nearer nine than eight—Barnaby couldn't say, and he rather hoped it would remain so. It was the singular advantage of finding this case at this time: the confusion and the machinations pushed everything else aside.

"But she's got the best motive, sir," Troy said, walking back across the patch of tile behind his desk. "By far!"

Barnaby nodded slightly. "That may be true—" The rest of his sentence was interrupted by the shrill ring of the phone on his desk. The cuff of his shirt sleeve brushed against a stack of papers as he reached for the receiver, and he caught the collapsing pile with his other hand. "DCI Barnaby."

A clear, familiar voice reached his ear, cutting through the endless tune of voices, keyboards, footsteps, and telephones. "Sir?"

"Oh, good afternoon, Angel," Barnaby said, waving a hand at Troy to sit down. The man did so, taking his pen and leaning over the neat stack of forms on his desk again. Almost dutifully.

"Sir," PC Angel said, "there's been an accident in Midsomer Magna."

"Oh?" Barnaby's fingers tightened around the phone, their very tips tingling.  _Something's changed._

"That Punch and Judy van had a blowout on the tires, ended up in a field."

"When?"

"Just now." Angel's voice crackled as the mobile signal waned briefly, then returned to full strength. "They said they were on their way back from the fete."

"Only the two of them?" Troy looked up, shuffling his papers into a neater stack before capping his pen and returning it to the small mound of them near the edge of his desk. He was already alert.

"Yes, sir," the constable continued. "We're taking them home now."

"Anything odd about it?" With his free hand, Barnaby tugged a pad of paper from a desk drawer, then reached for a pen of his own.

"Yes, sir. Three holes in the tires. Someone from SOCO's out here already, thinks they might have come from nails or spikes."

"That's a nasty business," Barnaby muttered, scribbling a few words on the top page.  _tire blowout. nails/spikes. three holes._

"It nearly had them into a wall, sir."

Barnaby added another phrase.  _could have been fatal._  "Are they both all right?"

"Just shaken, I think."

"Ah, thank you, Angel. We're on our way."

Barnaby dropped the receiver, looking over the words that slanted down across the lined paper, cramped and hurried.  _Could have been fatal,_  he thought, clicking the top of his pen to retract the ballpoint end. But laying such a crude trap was the work of an amateur—an amateur in the midst of panic.

"What happened, sir?" Troy asked, walking to Barnaby's desk to glance at the page. "Bloody hell..."

The chief inspector dropped the pen, not caring where it came to rest as he snatched his jacket from the back of his chair. "It seems  _someone_  was rattled by Clarice's show after all," he said, swiftly thrusting his arms through the sleeves. "The van went off the road after the tires were punctured."

"Might have just been squicked by the puppets," Troy said, scowling as he hurried across the room for his own jacket.

"Troy..." Barnaby sighed, shaking his head.

"They're horrid little things, sir, they just—are."

His sergeant's face was as pale as when the man had stood on the roof of Chetwood House just a few weeks earlier. "Heights, puppets..." Barnaby set a fast pace out of the office. "Anything you  _aren't_  afraid of?"

Troy was almost scrambling to catch him, a few sputtered protests spilling from his mouth as they walked even quicker through the corridor and the noises of CID faded. "That's not—"

"Hmm."

"I'm just saying—"

"I doubt anyone was too upset by just looking at Mr. Punch," Barnaby interrupted as the fresh air enveloped them, banishing the station's stale ghosts. Digging his car keys from his pocket, he waved an impatient hand at Troy. "I'll drive." No use in them having an accident en route to investigate sabotage and attempted murder.

Ten minutes on the road had them past the outskirts of Causton and on one of the narrow, unlined Midsomer roads, passing blurs of trees decked in green finery and billowing fields filled with bleating sheep. The clear sun of the early afternoon had not faded—Barnaby had not found a chance to ask Joyce about the money her croquet stall raised—and had they been driving straight into it, he would have been blind.

The click of the indicator was drowned by the ringing of Troy's phone. His sergeant fumbled with his jacket, finally slipping one of his hands beneath the seat belt to retrieve his mobile, answering without reading the name on the display. "Troy."

Though Barnaby kept his gaze firmly on the road, he watched the man beside him from the corner of his eye. Troy stiffened for a brief moment, then his shoulders loosened. "Oh—hi."

_No name,_  Barnaby thought, completing the left turn.  _A greeting, but no name._  Obvious.

"No, not at all," Troy continued, switching the phone to his left ear and leaning toward the passenger door. "No, we're just on our way back to Midsomer Magna." The voice at the other end of the line was impossible to understand, but easily identifiable as female. "Yes, earlier, for the fete—" Another pause. "Something's come up."

Barnaby let his eyes scan the trees at the edge of the tarmac, scouring the trunks for the break indicating the main road to Midsomer Magna. No more than another mile. The phone conversation beside him—half of it—was more relaxed than he had expected, as though Troy had forgotten his presence.

Troy just listened to the muted voice for a few seconds. "No, I don't think—" In the middle of the next word, he stopped, drawing a deeper breath. "Don't know yet...Uh, yes. Why?"

The houses at the edge of Midsomer Magna trickled into view: one small cottage stood here, another sat across the road a quarter mile farther along as Troy continued to listen, propping his elbow on the edge of the door and nearly smiling. "It's going that badly?"

Barnaby pressed his foot on the brake pedal, gently bringing the car to a brief halt at a stop sign. The houses with their neat front gardens were more frequent on this stretch of the road, and after another minute of the half-heard conversation—the words on Troy's end remained brief, almost deliberately innocuous apart from "Well, give me a ring whenever you're done." Then, faster and warier, "Maybe tonight."—the houses gave way to the village shops.

"Bye," Troy said finally, ending the call and tucking the phone back into his jacket pocket.

His sergeant's elbow was still propped up on the door, his knuckles pressed to the window's glass as he stared at the tidy brick buildings. Feigned interest, Barnaby knew, for the hedgerows fencing in the front gardens and the ivy tumbling over the walls of the cottages had neither grown nor been cut back in the hours since they had last traveled this road.

"Cully, was it?" Barnaby asked finally, tightening his hands on the steering wheel. His thoughts on this— _situation_  had been clear from the beginning. Mostly, at least. But which was worse, yes or no?

"Yes—sir," Troy said, leaning forward to peer at a street sign. His gaze was more focused than usual, and his fingers were almost twitching.

"Anything important?"

"Not really." His sergeant fell back into his seat. "She thinks her rehearsal might run long. Wanted me to know, that's all."

"Ah."

No more words passed between them until Woody Pope opened the front door of his home. The pale columns, crisp windows, and well-fed roses running the length of its façade revealed no change in the world, but his face was red and anxious beneath his moustache. "Come in," he muttered, stepping away to give them room, "come in." It was all he managed as he led them into the house, repeating the words so many times they began to sound like nonsense from a child.

"Someone's rattled all of them," Troy whispered, bringing up the end of the column filing through the foyer.

"I'd say so," Barnaby said.

They were the words of a man almost in shock. "Come in," he said again as they entered the sitting room, abandoning them for his wife. Even across the room, she was obviously pale, clutching a glass of water with one hand, her cane with the other. Already sitting on the couch, Clarice looked just as unwell, her body drawn up and tense.

"It  _was_  deliberate," Barnaby said as Troy let the door close. "We found three spike holes in the tires." The last of Evelyn Pope's strength vanished and her husband took her arm, helping her sit in the upholstered chair by the fireplace; Barnaby suspected she was trembling. "And with that wall there, well, you were very lucky. We'll put an officer outside the door for you."

"You think they'll try again?" Clarice asked, her voice somehow steady.

"Well, if somebody wanted to get rid of you for whatever reason...didn't succeed, did they?" Barnaby smiled slightly, though he knew such things never comforted. "And yes, yes, they may try again." It was, perhaps, the singular disadvantage of evading a murderer's plan, the fear that it might be attempted once more.

"You think they think I know something."

"Well, do you?"

Clarice's eyes widened. "No!"

"That picture that fell out of the Punch and Judy book," Barnaby said gently, nodding his head, "could I have a look at it, please?"

Clarice hesitated, weaving her fingers together, pressing her hands to her knees. Barnaby wondered if she was about to look at her aunt for guidance. "Does this have something to do with the investigation, Chief Inspector?" Evelyn asked, a little more harshly than he expected.

For a brief moment, Barnaby stood in the wood again, staring up at the sulfur yellow growth on that tree. With its delicately curling edges, it was almost beautiful to his gardener's mind, except where it had been touched by a human hand. "It might."

Slowly and carefully, Clarice stood, her arms clearly shaking.  _Only sensible,_  Barnaby thought,  _after you're almost murdered._  She walked around the couch to the table behind it, its back edge pressed flat against the wall. Troy had to step aside for her to open the drawer and pull out the ancient Punch and Judy book. Its binding crackled as she lifted the front cover, slipping out the photograph. As soon as the book was closed again, she replaced it in the drawer, returning to her position on the couch with the same caution as before.

That Troy glanced at her only to move out of her way did not escape Barnaby. At another time, his sergeant's eyes would have raked over her; when the two had first met, he thought they had. Now all Barnaby could believe was that Troy had been staring at the puppet she cradled in her arm, ready for it to spring to life. And even when he had introduced them—something had forced "Gavin Troy" from his mouth rather than the more formal "Sergeant Troy"—there had been no untoward reaction.

God. And now, that same reaction here was clear. Troy was only polite toward Clarice and his face tightened whenever he noticed the disembodied puppet heads on the mantel. It was not fear the puppets, Barnaby saw, but unease. He shook his head for a moment, finally noticing that Clarice stood before him, offering him the picture with a steadier hand.

Taking it and clutching the bottom white strip of the Polaroid, Barnaby examined the image. Yes, it could only be the same fungus. The cut was exactly the same. "How long you had this photograph, Clarice?" he asked.

"I don't know," she said slowly. "It's one of Gregory's. He used to try to teach me. He'd put the names on the backs so I could sort of use them as—test cards."

Turning it over revealed only a blank patch of white on the slick back. "Well, there's no name on this one."

Her face darkened for a moment as she peered at it. "He normally put a date and location as well." She looked at him again. "He liked to keep a record."

"Why are you so interested in this particular picture, Chief Inspector?" Evelyn asked, grasping the handle of her cane with both hands, more fiercely than before. The wizened knuckles were nearly white.

"I think this photograph was taken at the murder scene," Barnaby said. "Gregory's cleaning brush was found a couple of yards from this tree stump, along with some blood stains. There's a bracket fungus growing on a tree stump. This fungus has been partially cut away." He held it up, turning the image toward her. "It looks  _identical_ to this one. Now, I think this photograph was taken very recently."

Neither of the women answered, and Barnaby looked from one to the other. Though always a keen gardener, he had no knowledge of mushrooms apart from the fact that his wife had no more luck cooking them than anything else. But no growth had appeared in the time that elapsed between the taking of the picture and the discovery of Gregory Chambers' cleaning brush. It could only be a few days, then, the same few days since the man had disappeared.

Evelyn did not speak for a moment, pulling her cane toward her body. "What does it mean?"

_What does it mean?_  Barnaby repeated to himself, sure his face betrayed his disbelief. Just as he had immediately felt something off about Suzanna Chambers' behavior after her husband's disappearance, something  _wrong_  was clinging to Evelyn Pope and Clarice Opperman. They were hiding something, and probably more than the time when the Polaroid was taken. Drawing himself up, he said, "I didn't notice any suspicious reactions when Mr. Punch mentioned the piece of paper. Did you?"

Again, Evelyn was silent, her eyes focused on the carpet for a few seconds. "Suzanna knew Gregory was having an affair, before he was murdered," she managed finally. "Did you know that?"

"Go on," Barnaby said, the muscles in his shoulders tightening in anticipation.

"The landlady of the Red Horse told me today. Did Suzanna tell you she knew of the affair?"

"Suzanna and Tristan  _both_  have alibis."

Her opinion remained unchanged, he saw. "There is such a thing as a false alibi."

Barnaby nodded in spite of himself. "That is true, but that's a lot of lying by a lot of people."

And yet...Suzanna had driven through the wood on her way  _out_  of Midsomer Magna; then, Kenneth Gooders had driven through the same wood on his way  _back_  to Midsomer Magna; and Tristan and Julia were in a budget meeting. Alibis all around, all with something suddenly ringing false. It was too fortuitous, too coincidental that these four people so well connected to the missing man should either be in the forest at the time of his disappearance or providing one another with that valuable alibi.

He would have to give it more thought later, when his irritation with this quiet deception began to fade. "That officer will be out here within the hour," he said, handing the picture back to Clarice. When it was clutched in her fingers again, she looked down to it with sad and almost tired eyes; she had clearly lost a friend.

"Do you think that will be enough?" Woody asked slowly, his hand pressed heavily on his wife's shoulder.

Barnaby nodded quickly. "The attack earlier today was deliberate, but anonymous. I doubt there's any further danger right now. It's all we can do until we learn more." Clarice released a shaky breath. "If you remember anything else," he went on, "give us a ring."

Evelyn began to stand, but Woody's hand did not move and she did not fight its weight. "Of course, Chief Inspector," she said quietly.

Woody showed them to the front door and the path through the garden silently, only saying "Thank you" when they were outside again, his voice distant. He closed the door rather harder than Barnaby expected, more than a few of the crimson roses shivering.  _Wanting to shut out the danger,_  he thought, walking over the grey paving stones and through the path in the hedge to the car, Troy just behind him. "Here," Barnaby said quietly, searching for the car keys in his pocket. After a second, his fingers closed around the metal ring and he held them out to Troy. Despite his lack of faith in his sergeant's driving skills and the consequent fear for his car's safe return to CID, he required time to think.

"Do you think she could be right, sir?" Troy asked once they were on the road, the Popes' grand house lying farther behind them with each revolution of the tires.

"What, that there's some sort of alibi conspiracy?"

Troy shrugged, his gaze moving from the tarmac to the right hand wing mirror. "If you're right, sir, and it's something to do with the hotel, it's got to be one of them."

"Except that they're all accounted for," Barnaby answered quietly.

"All the more reason not to forget Annie and Tyson."

The possibility was growing in his mind. Could Evelyn be right? The news of Tristan's skill with a bow and arrow sparked an intriguing possibility. And those alibis... _"On my way to the hairdresser's—I went through the woods...That makes me a suspect, I suppose."_  Suzanna had not hesitated to tell him that. Then there was Kenneth's unconcerned and arrogant admission to Troy about his own presence there, less than an hour before the funeral.  _"Oh, I didn't mention it yesterday, but actually, I drove through the forest in the morning. So..."_

And what of Julia and Tristan?  _"Yes. Tristan was with me from ten-thirty 'til about twenty to twelve. We had to cut it short because of the funeral."_   _"I was in the kitchen from...eight 'til about ten-thirty, then I was in the office—had a budget meeting with Julia—and then I went back to change for the funeral."_

The alibis for all four were tight—and convenient. If the timing of the murder was so crucial, it was a miracle that each one had been somewhere verifiable. Yet Evelyn's assertion about false alibis..."A lot of lying indeed," Barnaby said as the road passed in a blur, Troy's foot pressed more heavily on the accelerator than his own had been on the way into the village. But none of them had a motive so far as he could ascertain, let alone all four of them. Suzanna gained Gregory's share of the hotel, but they already held a majority interest without it.

"Come again, sir?" Troy's voice broke through his thoughts, and Barnaby looked at him briefly.

"Oh, it's nothing, Troy." He ignored the sudden engagement of the brake pedal. "It's just the more I think about it, the more I'm certain Annie and Tyson aren't involved...But that's it, I think, for the day."

"A nice change of pace," Troy muttered, turning the steering wheel hard and a bit too fast.

"Anything else on, the rest of the day?" Barnaby asked, curling his fingers around the door handle and sinking into the seat. Already, the man's answer was running through his mind.

"Just picking Cully up from rehearsal." Only the slightest pause preceded those words, like he took no notice of them anymore, like this new ritual of giving Cully a lift was unremarkable. "I thought I might try to catch the football, too."

"Hopefully my daughter won't run  _too_  late, then," Barnaby said, indigestion flaring briefly.

"Mostly the rehearsals haven't, sir, I think this might be the second—"

"I'm glad to hear that, even if I've  _seen_  no evidence of it." Though an actress's hours were no more regular than a policeman's, Barnaby had become habituated to a certain schedule whenever his daughter was working in Causton. The first few weeks of rehearsal it was as though she was working any other job; technical week, she vanished; and when the performances began, her days were so skewed to the afternoon and evening hours, he expected to see almost nothing of her.

_That's the ordinary course of events,_  Barnaby thought, pressing the back of his palm to his mouth as he turned the recent past over in his mind. His hand would do nothing against the bile if it chose to rise, though.  _This is_ not  _ordinary._  Not just the time for an innocent ride from the theater, but all of it—and it had ceased to be ordinary a very long time ago.

Troy just shrugged, one hand falling away from the steering wheel when the car came to a halt at an intersection with the first main Causton road. "Well, it's nice to talk about how things went—"

"I'm sure, Troy," Barnaby said, staring at the last of the fields before they were consumed by the county town's sprawl. "I'm sure."


	23. Chapter 22: A Change In Course

**Chapter 22: A Change In Course**

After such an early end to the day, Troy hardly knew what to do with himself. Days that never ended and yielded hours of overtime were so familiar they were almost normal. The last three weeks, at times, had felt like one endless shift. But a workday that ended at four in the afternoon? That allowed him to be home before five? He had checked his watch several times before believing he was standing in the kitchen at his flat, rather than hallucinating behind his desk.

A cup of tea was in order; he let it brew whilst he shed his work clothes, exchanging his dark grey suit and light blue dress shirt for jeans and a black t-shirt. That consumed several minutes, and Troy returned to the kitchen to remove the teabag from his mug at just the right moment, adding a small splash of milk and a few spoons of sugar.

As he let it cool slightly, Troy reached for his mobile. It was far too soon for Cully to call about the end of the day's rehearsal, but he wanted it at hand nevertheless, to be able to hear her voice immediately. Just the memory of its sound was transforming into a torment while he waited. How had he managed to do without it for months at a time when he now doubted his ability to last a few hours in its absence? Lifting his mug, Troy frowned at his hand; it was shaking slightly. How was it that the anticipation of her voice and the ache that went with it were so easily stoked...and how were they so simply tamed in the end? Even that quick phone conversation with her in the car earlier today—even with Barnaby at his side!—was enough to soothe both.

_The ringing of his phone was not unexpected at this stage in the case—reports could be completed at any moment—and he thrust a hand in his pocket to retrieve it. Or attempted to, for his hand collided with the slick fabric of the seat belt for a moment before he could work his fingers around it. Finally pulling it out of his jacket after three or four rings, he answered it before looking at the caller's name. "Troy."_

_The short response was clear, maddening—and lovely. "Hi, Gavin?"_

_His heartbeat quickened and his muscles tensed, but both relaxed just as quickly: sensibility followed by inevitability. "Oh—hi."_

_"Did I catch you at a bad moment?" Cully asked._

_Though her voice was not loud, Troy shifted the phone to his left ear and pressed his shoulder to the passenger door, farther from Barnaby. "No, not at all."_

_"Is something wrong?"_

_"No," Troy said again, shaking his head as if she was in the car to see it, "we're just on our way to Midsomer Magna."_

_Her answer was delayed by mumbled words on her end of the line, the tones of the individual speakers bleeding together. "Weren't you there already?"_

_"Yes, earlier, for the fete—" Troy halted in the middle of the sentence. No use in blathering on about her mum's croquet stall. "Something's come up," he said instead. Why make it easy for Barnaby?_

_"Do you think you'll have another late day?"_

_"No, I don't think—" He stopped again, awareness of the chief inspector's presence growing with each passing word. Before continuing, Troy took a deep breath, warm and calming air filling his lungs. "Don't know yet."_

_"Is Dad with you?"_

_He had said nothing, but she had heard everything. "Uh, yes. Why?"_

_"It's nothing," Cully said quickly. Despite her comment, Troy now had to listen more for her voice; it was quieter than before. "I just thought I should let you know, rehearsal is probably going to run long tonight."_

_"It's going that badly?"_

_"Not_ badly _."_

_"Really?" he asked, not believing her as he pressed the receiver closer to his ear._

_Her sigh was gentle, though she probably thought it only sounded exasperated. "The director can't make up his mind."_

_"Isn't it a bit late for that?"_

_Now it was her laughter going ahead of what else she had to say, beautiful and light. "I told you, Gavin, not until the final curtain of the final performance._ Then _it's too late."_

_"Right. Well, give me a ring whenever you're done."_

_"Sure." The voices around her grew stronger, more hurried. "See you tomorrow, I guess?"_

_"Maybe tonight," Troy said quickly._

_"Right. Call you."_

_His eagerness for that phone call was already growing, for the moments and minutes of talking to her without Barnaby at his shoulder with his curious ears. "Bye."_

Troy downed the first mouthful of tea with an expectant—and rather pointless—glance at his mobile. It wasn't even five o'clock, the time her rehearsals often let out, and she had already given him fair warning about the later end to tonight's. Dropping into one of the wooden chairs at his kitchen table, he knew a long afternoon waited before him.

The hours trudged on, the impatience stoked by so many days on which, by this time, he had already seen her and spoken to her and kissed her. Almost thirty minutes elapsed while he read the morning paper he usually ignored. ("Local man suffers mushroom poisoning, collectors cautioned.") Another few minutes disappeared as he half listened to the news. ("The European Commission has approved an additional €9 million—£6.5 million—in funds for the upcoming Afghanistan presidential election.") When his stomach complained of hunger for the first time since midday, Troy considered ordering a takeaway until he recalled the leftover Indian congealing in his refrigerator. He ignored the sensation.

In her absence, though, he primarily sifted through the buried dreams that had haunted him for so long. As desperately as he enjoyed her presence—sometimes, he craved it like a drug—that desire paled beside what his mind wove when he permitted it to drift. At times, the visions were so vivid, so  _real_ , Troy supposed they dwelt in the deepest circle of his mind, a place untouched by common sense. And over the last month, their details had become clearer, sharper, and nearly painful.

In those moments, it was not just her mouth and lips fitting perfectly to his, but her entire body. Every inch of her skin was laid bare like his own, pale and warm and soft. She laughed when she kissed him and shivered when his fingers ran over her collarbone.

A torment indeed, and one he happily endured.

Her call came around six thirty, far later than was typical—and even later than he had anticipated, despite her warning. Again, he answered his mobile without looking at the caller's name on the display. Who else could it be? "Hello?"

"I told you it would be long."

"Spot on about that," Troy said, the tension loosening in his chest. With just a few words from her, he remembered how to breathe.

Cully laughed quietly; it was the same sound he had just heard repeated in those dreams, and his cheeks flushed like she had sat beside him and seen them as well. "The longest until tech, probably," she said.

"I hope so," he muttered, his mouth dry.

"What, Gavin?"

He had not realized he had spoken so quietly, but all the better. "Nothing." Troy flattened his free hand against the table; his fingers were almost shaking once more from the desire to see her face and properly hear her voice. "When should I be there?"

"We're almost done—I think he wants to pick everything over one more time."

A smile curled across his mouth and his fingers no longer threatened to tremble. "That picky, is he?"

There was silence for a moment, and Troy wondered if she was shaking her head. "You need to choose your puns better."

"When do you want me to be there?" he asked, not bothering with a real response. If he'd been meant to crack proper jokes, he would have gone the comic route.

"Gavin, I didn't mean—"

"I know you didn't," he said, almost sighing. After all, she was right. "But when?"

"We'll be out around seven."

The time was too important now, and Troy blinked before he focused his gaze on the hands lazily turning on his watch, which read six thirty-seven. Twenty-three minutes, if she was right. "I'll see you then."

"Yeah," Cully whispered, the word catching somewhere in her throat. Another voice rang out in the background, heavy and deep, and before ending the call, she quickly added, "Sorry, I have to go, Gavin."

It was slipping away through his fingers, even as he tried to catch hold of the conversation that had ended almost soon as it had begun. Troy could not identify what he had heard in those last few words. They had been quiet and cautious and...What  _was_  it? Wistful? Merely thoughtful? He shook his head before setting his mobile on the table again. Perhaps he was hearing things, hearing what he wanted. No, not after...His skin prickled as his mind drifted back a few evenings, touching her again, feeling her shudder, and wanting—

As he shoved his chair back, he ignored the empty mug still sitting in the middle of the table. It could wait, he decided, shrugging into the first jacket he found hanging from the coat rack. Sometimes, Troy wondered why he still had that bloody thing in his kitchen when he rarely wore anything but a suit jacket, barring a raincoat over top of it. Well, at least it kept them out of the way, even while he wondered how they never gathered a layer of dust.

The short drive to the Causton Playhouse lasted for an eternity, one light remaining red longer than Troy ever remembered, and several cars moving at far less than the speed limit. Or so it seemed, for the speedometer revealed that he—and they—were actually several miles over. Not that it made a difference.

The clock on his dashboard read a few minutes before seven when he turned the engine off just across the street from the playhouse. With the workday complete for those with quiet, dull jobs and most of the town's shops closed for the evening, the street was nearly deserted. The clang of the car door when he shut it after extricating himself from the vehicle was terribly loud; unnoticeable in Causton's midday clamor, it was impossible to ignore now. Though the parking was metered, its enforcement ended at six and Troy crossed the street pleased enough to keep the coins in his pocket if that was the way of the world today. But on the whole, he would have preferred to spend a few pence at five thirty.

The first couple evenings, he had just waited in his car, not certain where he should meet her or what to do. That had quickly changed, and he now waited at the corner of the alley that led to the stage door. The cast usually emerged in a swarm and Cully had introduced him to various actors, though their names were only mentioned as a matter of politeness.

The men playing Colonel Pickering and Professor Higgins were both older and somewhat gruff. Then there was Mrs. Pearce, a middle-aged woman with greying hair above her ears and a hint of mischief in her brown eyes; she winked at him occasionally. Freddy Eynsford Hill was portrayed by a tall young man Troy decided smiled too much, with dark hair and a slightly crooked nose, like he had broken it several years ago. The others' faces were too confusing to remember, and all their names had blurred into a mass of nonsense.

Tonight, now even a few minutes after seven, there was no one.

Nor at seven ten.

Nor, he learned after a quick look at his watch, at seven twenty.

Patience, Troy had known for a very long time, was not one of his best traits; Barnaby had given him more than one lecture about the need for more of it. While he could muster some when it proved necessary, Troy found himself twitching with  _impatience_  more often than not. The most important lesson he had taken from the chief inspector's talkings-to had been how to better conceal it.

At seven twenty-five, he returned to his car, sitting heavily and closing the door before pulling his mobile from his jacket. It had no record of calls or messages of any sort. _Almost done my arse,_  he thought, shoving the phone away again. The irritation was useless, he knew, but it was satisfying, even if it was probably the fault of no one. Well, maybe the director was due to be assigned some.

The interior of the car was already growing stuffy, the lingering heat of the summer evening almost suffocating until he started the engine long enough to roll down the driver's window halfway. A figure darted across the street and Troy learned forward—but it was only a man with a mobile pressed to his ear, his gaze fixed on the tarmac.

Frowning at his disappointment, Troy leaned back into the seat, his right hand resting on the door handle and his left lying against the gearshift. While he waited—when his eyes closed briefly—he already saw her smiling and let his fingers explore her warm, bare skin.

* * *

"Gavin?" Her words and the accompanying rap of her knuckles on what was visible of the car window woke him, though his sleep had hardly been a deep one.

"Oh—sorry, Cully," Troy muttered. As the last dregs of his short nap fled from his mind—he was not yet awake enough to feel if his skin was reddening—he just caught sight of the dashboard clock. A few minutes past eight thirty. Ignoring his shoulder, half numb where it had lain against the paneling, he opened the car door slowly. She stepped back to avoid its swing, then forward again when it closed heavily.

"Why?" she asked before quickly kissing his cheek the way she always did at this moment. Each day, he anticipated it with more ferocity, and its near daily fulfillment was equal parts happiness and relief. Today's delay had been maddening.

"Well—" Her gaze was not on his face, but traveling up and down him, like she was trying to decide what she was seeing. And she was almost ready to laugh. "What's so funny?" he asked.

"You." Now her hand settled on his, clasping it after a moment. "It's still strange seeing you in something other than a suit and tie."

He had to think just to remember the time he had taken to change to the jeans and t-shirt. His jacket was black leather—or whatever passed for it in these more animal-friendly times—and he had grabbed a pair of tan boots he rarely wore. Their comfort was worth their being an eyesore. "Oh." It was an idiotic answer, just something to fill the empty air. But what else was there to say, Troy wondered as the first pulse of blood crept beneath his pale skin. And how could her words freeze his own tongue?

Cully was dressed as she was every day, in jeans and a simple blouse with her bag over one shoulder. Frills had no place in acting until the final costumes were donned. Until then, they were merely a hindrance. If her simple, friendly kiss was a relief, then seeing her was a torment again: her beautiful face surrounded by locks of ever longer hair; her frame with the gentle, hidden curves he had almost worshiped a minute ago yet had never seen with his own eyes; and still her voice—

"I wouldn't have called you if I'd known he was going to keep us so long," she added.

Troy reminded himself to blink, to swallow against his suddenly parched mouth. "I was starting to wonder," he managed. Each of her smaller fingers was suddenly entwined with his larger ones, so familiar—and so new that the pleasure of just touching her had yet to be dulled by that familiarity.

"We  _were_  finished," she said quietly, sounding drained as she turned for another look at the playhouse. Even in the faint light of the day's end, it was still something of an impressive building. The plain, white stone façade bore classical columns and the bright green doors displayed several small posters with details about the upcoming run of  _Pygmalion_. The plants that had once hung on either side of the black sign painted  _Causton Playhouse_  had disappeared a couple of years prior. A nice theater for a small town, but no one would place it anywhere else.  _How different must it be,_  Troy thought,  _returning from London to this? Why would you stay, Cully?_

"The director changed his mind again?" he asked, squeezing her palm. Was that her pulse he felt? No, his fingers were too far from her wrist—but neither was the rhythm coming from his own veins.

"Yes," she said, letting all of her weight fall against the side of the car. Her face, too, was tired, as though the day that had just passed had been without end. Lifting her free hand, Cully touched the side of her head, rubbing a tiny circle against her skull. "We had half an hour of yelling and ranting, then another hour of running scenes."

"So, par for the course?" Perhaps it was his own heartbeat he was feeling, pounding so heavily.

"With him, yes."

"Why do you do it, Cully?" Troy asked, shaking his head.

"Do what?"

"Put up with him?"

"What do you mean by that?" The tone of her voice rose as her hand fell away from her head.

"Well,  _all_  of you," Troy said quickly, scrambling for words. God, the last thing he needed to do was insult someone she obviously admired. But a spade was a spade. "Sounds like he's a pompous git."

"He isn't, Gavin."

"Doesn't sound fair on you."

Cully tugged her hand away, leaving his chilled. "He's one of the best directors in the southeast."

"That can't be a good enough excuse," Troy said. Even standing this close to her was a weak consolation for the loss of her hand, of the feel of her skin against his. Mere proximity yielded the wrong sort of warmth.

"Maybe, but the committee looks past most of it. We're lucky he's willing to direct at the Playhouse at all."

"The creative process makes it all right?"

A tired hiss rose from her throat. "I  _was_  almost out the door."

"Good thing he caught you then," Troy muttered, reaching for her hand again. Every moment with her was valuable—ridiculously so—since so few of them were to be had. They had work days to discuss, barbs to trade, and—only a final kiss and embrace to exchange. Bloody hell, it was driving him mad to only touch the skin the rest of the world saw as well when he imagined—

"What?" she asked.

His words had been muddled even in his own ears, thank god. "It's nothing," he said. And what would  _she_  say?

"He's unpredictable at the best of times."

"At least you know what to expect."

For a minute they stood by the car, silent, a light breeze drifting from the still bright western horizon. Troy was content to wait there longer, to ignore the point that came sooner each day: the unavoidable goodbye. But Cully's palm soon turned clammy and he saw her shiver when a stronger gust of air rolled through the street.

"We should probably be going," she said quietly, pulling her hand from his again as she walked away, around the front of the car to the passenger door. He had the doors unlocked before she even tried to open it, and they settled into the front seats in silence; Cully nearly collapsed, like it was the first moment she had found to sit since the morning.

"Look," Troy said as she dropped her bag by her feet, "let me take you to dinner. Get your mind off it."

"I'd like that."

He had turned the ignition and put on his seat belt before he saw her staring through the windscreen, almost biting her lip as she considered something.  _Or she's just tired,_  Troy thought.  _As usual._  He shifted into reverse—

"Gavin, wait," Cully said, her hand dropping onto his. Was it too much to hope that she had not noticed the quick breath he had just taken in?

"Did you forget something?"

"No, just—" The exhaustion vanished from her face, replaced by a smile. "Let me make it up to you."

"What?"

"The wait," she said, fastening her own seat belt. "You do have food in your kitchen, right?"

_God, not now._  "Cully—"

"Well, you dodged the chance I had to make you dinner before."

_I never would,_  he thought. "When?"

"After that first cricket match of yours."

If his face had not darkened in embarrassment when he first saw her this evening, he knew it had now. "Oh, that..."

"Are you  _still_  bothered by it?"

"Then what was Monday?" he asked unhappily. That afternoon so long ago—most of it—still rankled. How the hell did you ignore such a pathetic outing even a month on?

"Mum's leftovers don't count," Cully said, her hand tightening on his. "You never answered my question," she added when he said nothing.

"Which one?"

"Do you have any food in your kitchen?"

Troy considered his cupboards and the tiny fridge beneath his counter: there was little to work with. A small grin broke across his face. "Up for a challenge, are you?"

With a laugh, her hand left his, her fingertips gliding over his skin. "It's that empty?"

"You can decide that for yourself," he managed, the tension building in his chest again. And it was a dangerous challenge, when even breathing was becoming difficult.


	24. Chapter 23: Exiting the Circle

**Chapter 23: Exiting the Circle**

It was not without a little trepidation that Troy opened the door to his flat, stepping back to allow Cully in first. After closing the door, he hung his jacket on the rack, placing Cully's bag there as well. He was still surprised she did not have a coat, though it made sense when he thought about it. She had not expected to be quite so late getting out of rehearsal this evening, and the day had cooled unseasonably.

The kitchen was as tidy as when he had left, just like the rest of his flat. But the rest of his flat was unimportant, because Cully was only surveying the kitchen, her eyes running over every surface. The counter was clear except for a loaf of white bread, the tea kettle, and a folded towel beside the sink. Not a single dish waited on the draining board to be returned to its proper place. The chairs were tucked beneath the table on which the paper he had read earlier lay, along with his used tea cup. It was, Troy noted a touch unhappily, the only thing out of the ordinary: the single point of disarray.

Well, not quite, after all—

No, that wasn't right, either. Two months ago, even  _one_  month ago, Cully would have been out of place: a stranger in a strange land. But after the past month, her presence felt almost normal—not quite expected or typical, but comfortable.

Stopping in front of the tiny refrigerator, she glanced to him. "May I?"

"Sure," he said in a flat voice, his muscles already tensing as she swung the door open. She needn't have asked permission and heaven help her if she expected anything other than what she found.

"Gavin," she said quietly, her head dropping.

"What?"

"You can't live like this." She waved one hand toward the rather bare interior and he walked over to join her, peering in as well. Troy had anticipated her reaction—it was almost disappointment, though he saw no surprise on her face—but that made the feeling no easier. A pack of bacon, a jar of marmalade, a tub of margarine, and a bottle of ketchup sat on lowest shelf of the refrigerator. On the shelf above was a small silver container with leftovers from the night before, and in the door was a nearly full bottle of red wine and a pint of milk rapidly approaching its use-by date. The rest was empty space.

"You didn't think there'd be any mushrooms, did you?"

"What about them?" Cully asked, standing straight again. She had had to crouch slightly to see properly. "They're perfectly fine when you buy them at the shop."

"Right," he said, just catching himself before he rolled his eyes. The newspaper's advice for collectors to be cautious was a little off the mark.

"Okay, forget about the mushrooms, Gavin." She lifted her hand from the top of the door's frame, and it closed with a gentle thud. "That's not the point."

"Then what is?"

"The only real thing you have in there is leftover takeaway!"

"Is that all?" He rarely paid much attention to the refrigerator's contents except on the occasional weekend morning he cooked something for breakfast.

"A curry from last night, I hope?" she asked, folding her arms beneath her breasts.

"Probably." He shrugged, pushing the sudden wrinkling of her blouse from his mind. "There's bacon and margarine."

"And the bread to make a nice bacon butty." She nodded to the loaf on the counter.

"It's quick."

Cully shuddered, though Troy thought it was a brief moment of the actress breaking through. Sometimes, there was no knowing where one ended and the other began. "I have no doubts about that," she said.

"You're the one who offered, remember?"

Her arms dropped and she tucked her hands in her back pockets—and Troy had to clench his teeth, almost hearing her blouse move as it clung to her body. That was as much torture as merely seeing—  _No, stop it!_  "But you never answered the question, Gavin."

Troy loosened his jaw, drawing in a deep breath of thick air. "I  _did_ ask if you were up for a challenge."

She turned around, lifting her head to look at the cupboards over the sink. "You could have warned me it was as bad as this."

The cupboards were no better than the refrigerator, Troy knew. In one, Cully's investigation revealed some tins—several contained beans, though he had forgotten what hid inside the others—beside a box of cereal and a small, ancient stack of instant noodles. The next one was much the same—pasta, oil, and a handful of other items he could neither see nor remember—though the final cupboard was nothing to be concerned about. At least there was no embarrassment in the canisters of tea, coffee, and sugar, and a small stack of plates.

"So, what do you make of it all?" he asked quietly.

She closed the door of the last one. "For dinner or of you?"

"Either one." The state of his kitchen probably revealed more to her than he had ever intended—but what of it? He had never attempted to hide his lack of regard of food from anyone, not even Cully.

"You mean," she began, walking back toward him, "apart from the fact that I don't think you could cook anything beyond bacon and toast?"

"That's the long and the short of it. I could do a bowl of cereal if you'd like."

"That's not cooking, Gavin."

"It's close enough," Troy said, smiling nonchalantly.

"Do you have a pan big enough to boil water?" she asked, glancing around the room again, as though wondering where a pan might be concealed in a kitchen that was never cooked in.

"The situation's not that bad."

"I'll have to see it before I trust you to have one. You were the one who thought Mum's  _bœuf bourguignon_  was wonderful, after all."

"Well, it  _was_."

The sudden kiss she pressed to his lips was quick and gentle, unexpected but not unsurprising. And it might be for the best that it began and ended in just a moment, given that only a couple inches of space were between them. "If you keep saying that, Gavin—"

Cully stopped in the middle of the sentence. "What?" he asked. She remained so close, each breath she released touched his skin.

Her eyes briefly narrowed, suddenly unfocused as she looked over his shoulder. At nothing. "Don't worry about it," she said, just above a whisper. "It's not important."

"All right," Troy said, his mouth dry and his pulse rapidly increasing. "So—" He had to begin again, the word fraying on his tongue. "So, what's for dinner?"

"I'll start something if you tell me where that pot is."

With the pot revealed—Troy did have a small, mismatched set of rarely used cookware—Cully set to work, first putting the water on to boil. As it began to steam and bubble, she returned to his cupboards, removing the box of pasta from one and an old tin of tomato sauce from another. When she asked him to hand her the bacon from the refrigerator, Troy only nodded, retrieving both the opened bacon and the red wine. He passed the former to her and poured two glasses of the latter, leaving the bottle uncorked beside them.

She had found a small frying pan in with his other cookware and laid four rashers of bacon across it. After she wrapped up the package again, she gave it back to him, taking the glass of wine he offered in exchange.  _At least the glasses match,_  Troy thought.

The water finally spitting and hissing as it boiled, Cully peeled back the cardboard flap on one of the ends of pasta box, removed a handful, and dropped it into the hot water. She didn't bother looking for a box of salt, choosing instead to unscrew the lid from the shaker beside the electric cooker and pour some into her palm before sprinkling it into the water.

"It really shouldn't have been that long tonight, Gavin," she said, putting the lid on again and returning the salt shaker to its corner of the counter. "I don't think he's ever held us back like that."

"Only what I deserve."

"Still." As the water struggled to boil again, she turned on the burner underneath the pan of bacon.

"But it figures it's the day I have time to spare," he added.

"That  _is_  strange, you having extra time." Cully opened one of the drawers beside the cooker, then closed it and moved to the next one, finally retrieving a long-handled wooden spoon.  _Probably the only one there is._  "How's the case going?" she asked, swishing the pasta around to force the exposed ends beneath the surface of the water.

"There's nothing to hold onto, Cully," he said, leaning back and letting the counter take the bulk of his weight. If he wished to, he could reach out his hand and touch her arm, her hair, her face—

"There has to be something." She set the spoon beside the cooker before glancing to the digital clock set above the burners: five minutes after nine, Troy saw.  _So much for not running late._  The pan with the bacon was now beginning to sizzle, the rich smell of salt, sugar, and pork fat wafting around the small room. Cully looked at it for a moment, then shook her head, leaving the rashers alone.

"I wish there was," he said, touching his wine glass. "Our suspects keep dying—or getting themselves poisoned."

Cully reached for her glass as well, lifting it briefly before taking a sip. "Wait," she said, tapping her fingers on the stem, "the paper this morning, right?"

"Yeah." The wine was almost warm enough to drink, Troy discovered, finally tasting it himself. "Didn't he tell you about it?"

"No. I haven't really had a chance to talk to him." Opening the first drawer beside the cooker again, Cully removed a fork. "He had only just got home when you called yesterday evening and he wasn't much for talking about it. I didn't even see him before he left this morning." Sliding the fork beneath the end of one piece of bacon, she turned it quickly to cook the other side. "But someone poisoned one of your suspects with mushrooms? Sounds like something from the Roman Empire," she continued, setting the fork beside the pasta spoon after all the bacon was flipped.

"Don't think I'll be eating any for a while."

"When were you planning to?" Cully asked, stirring the pasta again. "They're not the most popular ingredient in a chicken tikka."

"All the better for it," Troy said, nearly grinning as he swallowed another mouthful of wine.

"Gavin, you really are hopeless sometimes." With her slender, cautious fingers, she touched the bacon, nodding this time. "Do you have a tin opener?"

"Of course."

It was, in fact, tucked in one of the far corners of a drawer she had already opened, but Troy said nothing, instead retrieving it himself and handing it to her. "Thanks," she said. "Could I have a plate as well?"

"Sure." The small space between them—less than a foot—was suddenly tiny. The awareness of that proximity only became worse as Troy stepped away from her again to find a plate. As soon as he handed it to her, Cully pulled the bacon from the pan, laying the rashers flat on the ceramic where they still sizzled.

"So who is he, the man who was poisoned?" she asked, placing the gears on the top edge of the tin of tomato sauce and twisting the handle on the tin opener.

For a brief moment, Troy glared at the tin, not wanting to think about the date stamped on the metal. "He's one of the four—or you could say three, now—who inherited the hotel," he said, taking a large sip of wine. "It was some sort of mushroom he said this bloke collected a couple days ago."

The top of the tin finally yielded and Cully set the opener and the small circle of ragged metal aside. "Wait, who are we talking about? He didn't collect them himself?"

"No, Gregory Chambers did."

She tilted the tin over the pan, pouring some of the sauce into the still warm bacon drippings. "The man who went missing?"

"We're saying killed at this point."

Satisfied with the level of the sauce in the pan, Cully turned the tin upright, peering at the label. "Is there a chance you'll eat the rest of this, or should I just put it in the bin now?" she asked as she looked at him.

"Not likely I'd know what to do with it," Troy answered quietly, shaking his head.  _Isn't that the truth of it._

"Pass me a container, will you?"

The plastic containers that hid behind the plates saw more use than his pots and pans, and a number had faint yellow or red stains from various leftover curries and Chinese. Taking the one on top, Troy handed it to her with the matching lid. The tin emptied itself for the most part, and when she opened the same drawer where she had found the wooden spoon, Cully didn't bother looking for a spatula, Troy realized. Instead she scraped out what remained with a tablespoon, setting aside the tin to be rinsed out later and resting the used spoon on the edge of the plate.

"So he's officially missing, but probably dead," she said, pressing the lid on top.

"He went  _missing_  when he was collecting mushrooms," Troy said, taking the container from her before she could say anything, "and he's down a hand if he's still hobbling around."

Her hands now free, Cully gave the still boiling pot of pasta a vigorous stir. "How did they get the mushrooms if he disappeared whilst looking for them?"

He drank another mouthful of wine before leaving the counter to put the leftover sauce in the refrigerator. "They said he found some the day before, too. How often can you go mushrooming before it gets old?"

"It's a hobby. Some people really enjoy it."

"Then they can have at it. But Midsomer Magna's local mushroom nutter was going on about what it was like to eat one of these." And god, the man was barmy, wandering around his house in nothing but a woman's apron and taking orders from his bloody housekeeper! The fewer times he talked to that  _man_ , the better. "The whole time we were waiting for the ambulance, he kept asking what they tasted like, what the texture was like, how long did they take to cook."

"He  _wouldn't_  know if he's the local expert," Cully said, still gently sipping at the wine. Her glass was half full; his was nearly empty.

"He was so interested, it was a mess getting Goodfellow into the ambulance."

"Do they think he'll survive?"

Troy shook his head, and the man's agonized groan cut through his head again. "Just a matter of time, unless they can arrange a liver transplant. And those are hard to come by." It was almost unbelievable that such a small thing could do so much damage. A single mushroom was more than enough to kill, Salter had declared. They just huddled in the wood, patient and innocent and silent, waiting for someone to come along and mistake them for something else: biding their time like any other killer. But this whole mess was not the result of a mistake, not if a bag of the same mushrooms had appeared at the Gooders' door as a vicious little present. It had never been a possibility.

"That's awful," Cully said, her face growing pale, "knowing that you've been murdered and just waiting to die."

"I've never seen anything like it," Troy agreed quietly. Most murderers went about their business quickly, wanting the deed complete and receding into the past, the better to distance themselves from their crimes. But this—whoever was preying on Wainwright's heirs was almost playing a game, wanting it out in the open with everything done but nothing revealed. "Heartless bastard."

"Murderers usually are."

"Not all the time."

"How many sympathetic ones have you arrested?" Cully asked, stirring the pasta once more and glancing to the clock. Almost twenty after, Troy noticed, without the slightest inclination to hurry.

"A few. But it would be easier if they were all cold as fish."

"Simpler, you mean." Now Cully stirred the sauce in the pan with the same tablespoon as before, a hiss rising as it spit.

"Right," Troy said, picking up the wine bottle to top up Cully's glass. "And then, what the hell did someone hear in a—a puppet show to go off and try to kill the Professors?"

"Evelyn?"

"And her niece," he added, refilling his glass as well. "They almost hit a wall in their van today."

"It wasn't an accident?"

He shook his head again. "Not a chance with three clean holes in the tires."

"But they  _are_  all right?"

"Just frightened."

"They'd be mad if they weren't," Cully murmured, taking a larger sip of wine.

"Well," he began with a shrug of his shoulders, "if they're willing to work with those puppets, you never know."

"What's wrong with the puppets?" she asked, setting her glass down again and reaching for the wooden spoon. "They're just meant to be funny—no matter what else they mean in Midsomer Magna."

"Weird little things." His eyes narrowed as Cully drew a piece of the pasta from the pot, biting and chewing it slowly. She tapped her fingers on the spoon's handle for a moment, then nodded. "And you spend all day talking to yourself," he continued, blinking heavily. "It's a wonder it doesn't make them all crack."

"And you spend all day worrying about dead bodies or burglars. A lot of people are surprised it hasn't made policemen crack."

"Yeah, well, maybe it's a matter of time," he said with a frown.  _They should mention_ that _in training._  "You do wonder when the obvious suspects are almost ignored."

"I doubt that. Do you have a colander, Gavin?" Cully asked, turning off the heat beneath the pot of pasta.

"Somewhere." A minute or so of rummaging through one of the cupboards beneath the counter—the one Cully was standing in front of—yielded an almost unused plastic colander.

"Thanks," she said, placing it in the sink before returning to the cooker for the still simmering pot.

Troy touched the pot's handle then lifted his fingers again, the surface hotter than he had expected. "Here, I can—"

"It's all right, Gavin." She waved him away, lifting the pot with both hands and quickly pouring the contents into the colander, a great column of pale steam rising before her. Setting the pan on a cold burner, she shook the excess water from the pasta, the steam dissipating after a moment. "But what's going on?" she asked, turning away from the sink. "Are you and Dad arguing about something?"

His face twisted as he scowled. "Not arguing, just..."

"It sounds like it."

Troy didn't wait for her to say anything before he returned to the cupboard with dishes and found two bowls. He only ever used them on the mornings he had time for a quick bite of cereal. "Then tell me, Cully," he said as he set them on the counter, "if a man's having an illegitimate child and suddenly inherits a huge piece, wouldn't the mother have the best motive?"

Cully was silent for a moment, reaching for her wine glass—now half full again—then the stacked bowls. "She'd have one, but surely others do, too." Lifting the still dripping colander, she divided the pasta between them. "Is that what he's been saying to you?"

"Got it in one," he muttered.  _Now what?_ he thought. Did he set the table, did he refill her glass another time, did he offer to help finish the meal? Well, the last didn't matter anymore: Cully had already lifted the pan and was pouring out the sauce.

"Then maybe you  _should_  think about other suspects," she said, replacing the pan on the cooker. Taking the plate with the now cooled and slightly crispy bacon, she crumbled the rashers over the bowls with her fingertips.

"Right," he began, opening a drawer to remove a pair of forks, "but—"

"She can't be the only one." Finally finished with each dish, Cully turned on the tap, running her hands under clean water before drying them on the towel. "And what about the others who have died?"

The metal forks clanked sharply on the wooden table as he set them down. "She's still the best one," Troy said, returning to the counter for both glasses and the now much emptier wine bottle. "She's lost her job, what with everything they want to do to the hotel."

"So which is it?" Cully asked, walking to the table with the bowls in her hands. "Did she kill him because of a lover's spat or did she kill him—and the others—because of the inheritance?"

"No reason she couldn't have different—"

Cully shook her head. "Look, let's talk about something else."

"Fine," Troy said, immediately regretting the word as they sat. It always had a harshness to it and no matter who spoke it, it never rang true.  _Start again._  "Actually," he continued, lifting his glass of wine once more as he looked at her across the small table, "I want to ask you something, Cully."

Whatever exhaustion he had seen on her face an hour earlier had long ago vanished, and a small smile danced across her mouth while she took her glass as well. "What, Gavin?"


	25. Chapter 24: Midspan

**Chapter 24: Midspan**

"Your play," Troy said, still sipping at his wine, "why is it opening on Thursday?"

Cully's smile faded. "Is that it?"

_Did it again,_  he thought unhappily. Exchanging his glass for the fork beside his bowl, he added hastily, "Don't they usually open on Friday or Saturday?"

"It's the director's decision. He always insists on a certain number of performances of anything he directs." She tapped her fingers quickly on the edge of her glass, her nose twisting with what he imagined was irritation. "And he's quite specific about how he wants them split between matinees and evening shows."

"He gets to make that decision?"

"He'd have a hard time of it in London," she said, nodding. "But the Playhouse Committee was ecstatic to get him back here at all."

"He's directed in Causton before?" Troy asked, twirling several strands of pasta around the fork's tines.

"When he's had time on his hands." She finally released her hold on her glass. "I've had a chance to work with him a couple of times—once here, once in London. Actually, he's going to Brighton in a couple of months—"

"Brighton, of course," Troy muttered around the first bite of dinner.

"—so I guess you could say we're filling a gap in his schedule," Cully continued, louder now.

_Still probably true,_  he thought.  _Why else head out to Brighton?_  "It's not the nicest way to think about it," he said instead. As he worked another few strands of the pasta onto his fork, Troy swallowed the first mouthful; it was one of the most delicious things he had ever eaten.

"That's what it is, Gavin. We're lucky he picked Causton again instead of Oxford or Cambridge." Cully shoved a few wayward locks of hair from her face—it really was longer than she had worn it recently, Troy realized—before finally beginning to eat her own dinner. "But the only way we were able to reach the number of performances he specified was to open a day early."

"A little batty, is he?"

"No, he's just very particular," Cully said, rolling her eyes.

"Batty," he said again, forgetting the meal before him long enough to finish the remaining wine in his glass.

"He wants to be certain it's worth his time."

"So not—art for art's sake?"

"Not if your living depends on it," she said with a shake of her head, like the answer should have been obvious.

"Then it doesn't sound like he's a very good artist." Only a couple of inches of wine remained at the bottom of the bottle, and Troy split it between their glasses before setting the bottle to one side. All for the best: one less thing in front of her. God, if anyone was going mad— _batty_ , as it were—it was him. If he had half a brain, he would have left the bottle right where it was and found a dozen other things to stand beside it.

"Artists with patrons don't really exist anymore." Cully sipped at her wine quicker than before. "That's the only way you can afford to ignore how much your time costs."

"So how do those blokes with the splatter paintings and the like make it?"

"Sometimes they don't," she answered quietly, her gaze suddenly vacant and unfocused. She was tapping her fingers again, but this time they were slower, almost heavy.

"One of the hazards, is it?" Troy asked, instantly regretting the words. He had a notion of what might be turning in her mind, and it was putting it kindly to state that he had put his foot in his mouth. Again.

But she still managed a smile. "You could say that."

The vice tightening once more around his torso released, and Troy took another large forkful of dinner. Even though it was tinned, the tomato sauce was clean and bright. Almost vibrant. "This is lovely, Cully."

"Thanks. You didn't give me much to work with."

Troy willed away the embarrassment on his face. "There's no point in keeping it around for just me."

"I can tell."

The new silence was broken only by a clank of cutlery against dish, and even that faded. Letting the food be, Troy returned to his wine, drinking most of his glass in a single swallow.

Cully stretched out one arm toward his hand, but despite the table's size, she didn't quite reach him. "Sorry, Gavin," she said, her palm falling flat against the wood before she pulled it back, "I didn't mean that."

"Well, it's true."

Readying another bite, Cully said lowly, "Then maybe I should come round more often."

Troy had no answer, and so decided to say nothing. What  _did_  you say to that?  _"Yes."_   _"Please do."_   _"No, Cully, you're already haunting me, don't make it worse—"_  He coughed to conceal a laugh at that last one, finally finishing the little wine he had remaining. It would never be spoken—no matter how true it was.

"Now what?" she asked, her fork frozen for a moment.

"Just a thought."

"Care to share?"

"Nothing important," he said. Her gaze found the truth in words:  _Liar_ , it said, almost amused.

By the time dinner ended, Troy remembered to look at his watch, which now read a quarter to ten. At least he had made no promises about when she would be home, he reminded himself, ignoring the clatter as he dropped his fork into the empty bowl before him. Some things were out of his control.

Cully had the bowls and cutlery carefully stacked and beside the sink before he realized she had even stood, and was now reaching for the wine glasses, taking each one delicately by the stem. "What are you doing, Cully?" he asked, rising from his chair and reaching for her arm.

"It's just a few minutes," she said, tugging her arm from his grasp, then turning to rinse the dishes under a quick stream of water.

"That might make the difference."

"To what?" she asked, one bowl finished and the next begun.

How was this always so unavoidable? The man had brought her into his life—and meant to keep her at the periphery of it. No matter what he saw when his mind wandered, no matter his dreams, it was inescapable. Pressing his tongue to the back of his teeth, Troy drew a deep breath. "To how close your dad gets to breaking my neck," he said quietly, now taking her hand, which was wet and chilled, but hot underneath.

"Then bully for him," Cully said, pulling away from him again and returning to the small pile of dishes. As she reached for the forks, her hand paused. "He's upset about it anyway."

Troy turned the tap off before she could clean the wine glasses. "I don't doubt that."

"What did you expect, Gavin?" she asked, dropping the cutlery and reaching for the towel, wiping the thin film of water from her skin.

"How the hell should I  _know_  what to expect?" Noticing a free corner of the towel, he pressed his damp fingers to the cloth. "But I didn't say I was surprised."

"Good." She brushed at his hair with her fingertips, then slid them down to his cheek. They were soft and still cool—and her mouth was warm when she touched it to his, her fingers falling further to the edge of his jaw. "It doesn't matter, though," she said quietly when she drew back, taking her hand as well.

Words were almost impossible to form now, and Troy stumbled over a few trite ones, fighting against the knot growing in his throat and threatening to consume the rest of him. "I know that—"

"That's not what I meant." His brow creased at the firmness in her voice. "I mean, anyone would bother him at first."

"Anyone?"

"Anyone," she repeated with a nod.

Every possible response died in the back of his throat as his hand wandered to the small of her back, bringing her nearer. "And detective sergeants?" Troy managed after a few seconds. His palm shifted before he realized it, sliding forward to rest against her hip, molding itself around her body.

Something almost mischievous glittered in her eyes. At one time, he might have mistaken it for an amusing thought she had decided not to share, but not as her fingers ran along the edge of the shirt at his neck and her breath tickled his cheeks. " _Especially_  them," she whispered as the space between them—already small—vanished.

Despite the innumerable kisses they had shared over the past weeks, Troy was entirely unprepared for the throbbing of his pulse in his ears when his lips met hers. The taste of her mouth was muddled with that of tomato sauce and red wine, the latter rapidly pushing away all sense. And when her other hand reached the back of his neck to pull him to her, against the full length of her body and its curves, sense fled entirely.

The need for air was an annoyance to which they both succumbed in a quick gasp; Cully released another when his fingertips slipped beneath her blouse, rising from her hip to her waist. Her hand never moved from his neck, somehow bringing him nearer—and the fingers of her other curled around the fabric of his shirt, her nails gently running over the top of his chest.

The next breath Troy took was preceded by a deep groan, both cut off as Cully kissed him again. Between the wine and her mouth and her ever warmer touch, his senses had taken leave of him completely. His fingers moved higher—

_"You and Cully. I don't think I need to tell you anything else. Or I shouldn't."_

_"Sir, I won't—"_

_"I know you won't mean to, but you will."_

The memory of those words—"Gavin?"—was like the first blast of cold, wintry air crashing over him, an unwanted shiver rushing through his body—"Gavin?"—and stilling him.

"What's wrong, Gavin?" Cully asked, her mouth still so close to his that he smelled the wine she had drunk—that  _he_  had poured for her. She sounded mystified, and her forehead creased with the confusion.

"Nothing." Troy kissed her lightly, the soft touch overwhelming the dying echo in his ears. "Nothing," he said again, his fingers almost itching to begin their exploration once more—but remaining motionless against her suddenly rigid body instead.

Cully unfolded her hand from the top of his shirt. "Yes, something  _is_."

The sigh escaped him before he could stop it. "You know, Cully..."

"What?"

"He  _will_  have my neck for this."

The tension beneath her skin lessened. "Really?" she asked lightly.

When he heard her consider it and felt her fingers begin to rub the base of his neck, the worry was suddenly miles away, the world shrinking again. "I told you, he'll snap it."

"Still?"

"And that's just if I'm lucky," he murmured, his hand still motionless against her torso.

Cully pressed her lips to his cheek. "Hmm."

"Nothing for you to worry about, is it?"

"I think you're thinking too much," she said, moving to kiss his mouth almost cautiously.

The color flaring beneath his cheeks was not from embarrassment but irritation. "I've never been told that before."

"I'd believe it."

"Oh, thanks," he snapped, freeing himself from her blouse.

Cully looked straight at him and the weight of her eyes was immense, like she was studying him for the first time. "Then what happens if you're  _unlucky_?"

"I'll let you know if I find out," Troy said quietly.

"And what will you do about it?"

The irritation transformed into a point of hot anger. "So it's up to me—"

"You'll be the one wearing the neck brace," she said, forcing a few peals of laughter. They were not the pleasant, musical sound he craved when she was absent and his neck was chilled when her hand left it. "Gavin, please don't do this again."

"You think I want to?"

"Maybe!"

The anger had already ebbed away. "Cully, what'd be the point?" Troy asked, hearing the exhaustion in his own voice.  _God, here we go again._

"I don't know," she said, crossing her arms as she took a step away from him. "Sometimes, I really don't know."

"It's the real world, and it doesn't go away."

"I know that—"

"Not if  _you_  want it to"—his voice grew louder—"not if  _I_  want it to."

"So what is this," she asked, color blooming on her face as well, "something you're still just playing at? Is that all?"

The question hurt. "No—"

"A game?"

"No, Cully—"

Her eyes narrowed, the anger just reaching them. "Because I'm not, Gavin—" His mouth—hungry and almost desperate—stopped her words and Troy pulled her against himself again. She shuddered briefly before her hand grasped his shoulder like a vice, holding him where he was.

When he took another deep breath, Troy dropped his forehead to hers for a second, the patient rhythm of inhalation and exhalation calming. But the rhythm was off: she released a breath when he had taken half of one, when she drew another, he had already let his last go. He ignored it, just listening for a moment instead. "You know what I've said, Cully, just to keep my head on straight?"

"What?" she asked, brushing her fingers through the short locks of hair at his temple.

" 'If you weren't the governor's daughter'," he said quietly. "The bloody governor's daughter—because you  _are_. And it matters."

She spun a bit of the hair around a finger, lazily twirling it around again and again. "More than anything else?"

"No."

"Why should I believe you this time?"

"Because—"

" _Why?_ " she said loudly.

"I don't know what you want me to tell you, Cully," he said after a moment.

The twirling ceased. "So we're back there again?"

He pushed away the new memory of angry words rising in his mind. " _It still matters._ Everything  _still matters!" "But nothing's changed—" "I know it hasn't—"_ _God, that still burned so many months later._ "No, Cully— _no_ ," he whispered.

Now she trailed a fingertip over his cheekbone, the touch maddening. "Are you sure?"

His hands hadn't moved for a minute, but now the one on her shoulder drifted, traveling down her side then back up, tracing the curve of her breast. "God, what do you—"

"Just answer me, Gavin."

A few seconds ago, he had felt her pulse at the base of her neck. Now, he almost felt it within her ribcage. "It  _doesn't_  mean more than—" He stopped, needing another deep breath. "But it matters. It always will."

She pursed her lips, and it was as maddening as her fingers. "So, what now?"

A smile spread over his face as a tinny sound rang shrilly in his ears. "I think I'll take up jiujitsu," he said, choking on a laugh. "Maybe I'll keep him from snapping my neck."

Cully rolled her eyes once more, tapping his face gently. "Gavin—" He kissed her another time, and now her hand was at the base of his neck again, keeping him close. "If that's true," she said, running her nails over the vertebrae, "we'll probably be able to keep your neck in one piece."

That single word— _we—_ brought the warm knot back to his stomach. "You'd step in?"

"Of course, what did you expect?"

Troy shook his head. The rest of the world was already fading—even that faint, irritating ringing noise—leaving behind searing heat and tightening muscles. "I won't complain."

She pressed her lips to the edge of his jaw just in front of his ear. He just heard what she said, hardly more than a breath. "Good."

The world was no longer fading but was obliterated entirely, with only Cully's touch and body holding him to the earth. The wine blurred his senses, but she sharpened them: from the delicious sight of her flushing skin to the ringing in his ears—

It was a  _phone_  ringing. It fell silent for a few seconds before it began to blare again. God, it never ended. Cully glanced across the room, following the sound to his jacket; he had left his mobile in one of the pockets. "I didn't think you were supposed to ignore your phone," she said.

"I'm not." He had never done so before, not even when it came to life in the middle of the night. It could wait, that was all.

"But you  _are_."

Troy took a small step away from her. "I can answer—"

"Only if you have to," Cully said, clasping her palm around his wrist.

The ringing ended a second time, disappearing with everything else. Troy's hands were still exploring her body—still learning the feel of it before the sight of it—when his mobile rang a  _third_  time. Three attempts to contact him made it impossible to ignore, and he released an irritated groan. Cully's hand, on the already hot skin of his back, fell away. "Go on," she sighed, "answer it."

"Sorry," he whispered, kissing her cheek before he walked away to retrieve it. Each step was a little slower as a cold dread about the voice awaiting him when he answered began to settle. When he had it in his hand, he took a final calming gulp of air. "Troy."

"What the hell do you think you're doing?"

As expected, the chief inspector was livid at the other end of the line. "I—I'm sorry, sir?" Troy stammered. What the did that sentence  _mean_? He suppressed an urge to look back at Cully, though he supposed her father's voice was loud enough for her to hear as well.

"Answer your bloody phone," Barnaby grumbled.

Troy's breathing eased. "Yes—"

"I need you in Midsomer Magna, at the Gooders' house.  _Now_."

The blurriness of the last several minutes was gone, and Troy stood straighter at the clear urgency in his boss's words. "What's happened, sir?"

"Not sure yet, I'm just on the way myself. A gun shot at the very least."

"Yes, sir—"

"Get there. As soon as you can." With no other words, the line died.

"Now what?" Cully asked, running a hand over his shoulder. When had she come over to him? But certainly there was no point in wondering what she had overheard; most of it, he suspected.

"Don't really know," Troy said, reaching for her bag and his jacket. Turning around to hand her things to her, he pressed another quick kiss to her mouth. "I'm sorry, Cully."

After slinging her bag over one shoulder, Cully straightened her blouse; a pair of buttons near the hem were open. "That's the way it always is, isn't it?" she asked, rubbing one hand over her bare arm.

"The way it always will be," he added as he thrust his arms into the sleeves of his jacket before returning his mobile to the same pocket. "I'll drop you at home."

"Thanks, Gavin." Sliding the strap of her bag higher on her shoulder, Cully crossed her arms against her chest.

"Do you want a jacket?"

"No, don't worry about it," she said, already unfolding her arms and grasping one of his hands tightly. Her palm was warm.

Neither of them spoke as the journey began, apart from one brief moment when Cully pointed out a turn Troy had not noticed in the dark. His attention flitted from the road to his mirrors—the latter occasionally—to her face just out of the corner of his eye. And, too often, his gaze landed on the clock in the dashboard, the small glowing numbers marking the minutes as they passed. They vanished too quickly for his liking; more than once, Troy wished to replay the last hour and turn his bloody mobile off.

It was the  _whats_  and  _ifs_  and  _possibilities_  that maintained the silence for the entire drive and the languid walk up the path to the front door of the Barnaby home. Her presence was still a warm glow burning in his chest, one he was sure would remain for the rest of the evening—at the very least—but the sting burned alongside it.

Another few minutes couldn't mean a thing at this point, Troy decided, and he needed them desperately. While Cully looked for her keys in her bag, he struggled to find something to say—anything at all—but nothing came. They were in her hand when he managed, "Sorry."

Her hand paused halfway to the lock as she looked back at him. "Gavin, can we just stop this?"

_This?_  "Stop what?" he asked, almost stammering through the words.  _God, not again._  Everything was too bright and full of those same possibilities to just stop—

Cully reached for his hand, pressing it to hers in the cool night air. "Saying 'sorry'. I think we've said it often enough already."

Troy almost laughed, and he wondered if that was all she had wanted after enduring the heavy quiet in his car. "Yeah," he said quietly, kissing her one final time, refusing to linger any longer. If he did..."I'll see you tomorrow."

She raised one eyebrow before drawing her hand away. "You had better."


	26. Chapter 25: Aggressive Maneuvers

**Chapter 25: Aggressive Maneuvers**

Barnaby was fuming. Outside the front of the Gooders' house in the sea of light from the ambulance and the SOCO van, and the harried words of the constables, paramedics, and technicians rushing to and fro, he was beginning wear a path as he paced in the grass. Three calls— _three—_ and Troy had still nearly missed the final one. His sergeant was capable of abominable idiocy, but never anything that threatened to derail his career ambitions. And tonight of all nights...

Curses danced on his tongue—his hands balled into fists—his fingernails felt like they were cutting into his palms. Barnaby had known not to expect his daughter home early in the evening, or even by eight o'clock. But when the call from CID had come through at nearly ten, Cully was still nowhere to be seen.

_Three_  phone calls to rouse Troy's response! With his next step, Barnaby ground his foot into the soil.

A young constable slowly approached him, his face sallow in the electric lights. "Chief Inspector," he said in a soft voice, retreating briefly when he looked at Barnaby directly, "Dr. Bullard finished his examination of the body."

"Good to know  _someone_  can show up for his job," Barnaby muttered, scanning the drive another time for Troy's car. It remained absent. "Did he find anything unusual?"

The constable shook his head. "He didn't say, sir. I think he's waiting—"

"Tell me what  _you_  know."

"I—I just know—what came through on the call, sir." The constable looked over his shoulder, up at the first floor of the house. Light blazed through every window, though silhouettes only marred one window, coming and going and melding into one another when they crossed. "A middle-aged white female was killed and it was phoned in by a Mrs. Julia Gooders—"

"Never mind," Barnaby said, shoving his hands into his pockets, the bottoms of his palms still burning from the pressure of his nails. The cool night wind bit at his chest, and he held his arms stiffly to his sides to keep his jacket closer. "Go on with whatever you were doing."

"Yes, Chief Inspector," the man said, his pace increasing with each step he took toward the nearest police vehicle.

_Nothing new, then,_  Barnaby thought, quickly running a hand over his hair and returning it to his pocket. The victim's identity was all but certain and the killer's known beyond a shadow of a doubt. Why, though...If all of this began with a new will written by Karl Wainwright, then Suzanna Chambers and Julia Gooders were as deeply involved as Tristan Goodfellow and Kenneth Gooders, no doubt about that.

Yet something had shattered the wall of silence they had constructed with their lies, and the rubble still concealed the answer to the most important question:  _who?_  Was the rogue agent within or without? Conspirators turned on one another with such regularity that Barnaby was shocked conspiracies were still plotted and carried out. But conspirators who were spouses and lovers? Those ties were often tight enough to hold the most fragile plans together.

Was that all this was, the elimination of the final loose end? No, he didn't like that answer. In her panicked phone call, Julia Gooders had freely admitted her actions: she had shot an intruder, though she did not know the person's identity, and fled downstairs.

Did she possess the calculating mind to carry out these new crimes? Not the easily agitated woman who had been found shivering and almost unable to speak in her sitting room by the paramedics. A cup of tea with several sugars was all they had given her for the shock; the stronger remedies she was accustomed to needed to wait. Those nerves explained her actions tonight, but he did not see her hand in the other deaths—not all of them, at least. But then how many murderers awaited discovery in Midsomer Magna? Something else was simmering beneath the surface, someone lurking—

Another car turned into the drive with a screech of tires, pulling into the grass alongside the official vehicles. Barnaby didn't bother to watch as the driver's door opened and closed, or while the driver himself hurried across the front garden. The almost criminally atrocious operation of a motor vehicle was identification enough.

"What the hell were you thinking?" he shouted as Troy approached.  _Three_  bloody phone calls!

His sergeant's quick steps ceased a few feet away, his pale face gleaming beneath the floodlights. "I'm sorry, sir—"

"You can't just ignore your phone! Not at a time like this."

"I know—"

"Don't give me that claptrap if it doesn't mean anything, Troy." Whatever the man wanted to say, it could wait—he didn't want or need to hear it now.

"It's not—"

"So it won't happen again?"

Troy's eyes narrowed. "No, sir."

The anger burning in Barnaby's chest began to cool as the chaos swarming around them grew, innumerable voices rising in a cacophony of protocol and gathered evidence. Too many other things required his attention for him to worry about— _that_  right now. Paramedics in green scrubs packed away their equipment and removed the stretcher from the back of the ambulance, waiting for Bullard's signal to collect the body. SOCO technicians clad in white paper suits and shoe coverings exited the house laden with sealed plastic bags of evidence. Police constables in crisp uniforms prowled the perimeter of the property, sending away the curious neighbors. It was a familiar, comforting routine repeated at every crime scene as the public emerged from their everyday lives to gawk at the misfortune of others.

"What was so important for you to do something that stupid?" Barnaby asked, staring at the upper windows. God help him, he already knew the answer—but it was not coming yet. "Well?" he added, fixing Troy with a cold glare.

Troy took half a step back, but his expression tightened in anger. "I was with Cully," he said after a moment.

"Cully," Barnaby murmured.  _Of course._  It was the unwanted, but not unexpected, response. It was only made sharper by Troy's appearance: so—casual, just jeans and a t-shirt under his jacket. This man was nothing like the detective sergeant he encountered nearly every day, whose suits and shirts and ties unfailingly matched and who remained at arm's length. Who  _had_  remained at arm's length.

Lifting one his arms, Troy began to reach into one of his pockets, but dropped his hand instead. "Her rehearsal ran late."

"They often do." Barnaby pressed his hand to his face, closing his eyes. Never— _never—_ had one gone on as late as Troy was insinuating. And, by some miracle, her rehearsals for this play had all let out on time. "You still haven't given me a good reason for your stupidity."

Troy's gaze fell to the ground. "Just—in the middle of dinner, sir." When his eyes came up, they were unfocused. "I didn't really hear the phone ring—neither of us—"

"Dinner." Barnaby had to repeat the word; it stung like a paper cut. "Again?"

His sergeant took another step back from the lights. "Well, she offered to make something, sir," Troy said, now only half visible. "Better than leftover takeaway."

"I'm sure." God, it was just getting worse. "I'd hoped she would have been home at a  _reasonable_  hour—"

Troy frowned. "I didn't know she still had a curfew, sir—"

"I like to have some idea of where she is,  _Sergeant Troy_ —"

"You knew I was giving her a lift—"

"Several hours ago!" Barnaby's skin, cool a few moments earlier, was now hot with anger. "Spend a long time talking, did you?"

The man's face suddenly relaxed—his eyes drifting like he was somewhere else—and he swallowed before he answered. "Mostly about her director."

Barnaby choked back an unhappy laugh as he took a step toward the Gooders' house. "Nothing else?"

In spite of the heated words between them, Troy was following him. "You'll have to ask her—sir."

"I'll do that if I ever see her before her play opens," Barnaby said, squinting at the outline of the house. It was large and handsome, the front wall composed of brick with several windows in white frames. White columns stood on either side of the door and a wild tangle of shrubs and vines rose from the beds sitting before the wall. A lovely house, Barnaby knew—even if the gardening was not up to scratch—lately filled with  _unlovely_  horrors. "Should I assume you at least got her home before coming here?"

"Where else would she be?"

_Where indeed?_  Barnaby thought, ignoring the feet tramping on the staircase just past the open front door. "I should ask you—"

"Boys, boys," Bullard called as he stepped over the threshold from the foyer into the artificial light, "not around the dead. They still have ears." As always, George Bullard was bright and in good humor, and in his grey suit he looked like a man ready to begin a workday rather than one who had been called back to the front after the end of one.

"We'll finish talking about this later," Barnaby said to Troy. His sergeant was standing at his side again, no doubt wearing an even more confused expression than he usually did when confronting the pathologist. After all these years, George Bullard remained a mystery, and not just to Troy. At times, Barnaby found the man incomprehensible as well. "What do we have, George?"

Plain, clean facts awaited them as they hurried up the stairs after Bullard, taking quicker strides once they reached the landing. "Shotgun wound to the chest," he began as they reached the end of the yellow corridor and its innumerable miniatures in black frames. "Death was instantaneous."

Barnaby was not claustrophobic—phobias were best left to Troy, he had decided—but his chest constricted as they entered the bedroom. Even if the stands of lights and half dozen investigators were removed, he found it difficult to believe the room itself could ever be comfortable. The heavy wooden furniture and old-fashioned patterned wallpaper were heavy, closing in as they watched him watching  _them_ , keeping their secrets close.

"It seems Mrs. Gooders didn't realize who she'd shot until she turned on the lights," Bullard said, turning toward the motionless figure slumped against the wall. Leaning closer, he added, "It's affected her rather badly."

Standing before the body, Barnaby saw what he had expected: Suzanna Chambers dead, her still cooling skin red with drying blood. Conspirators often came to unpleasant ends. But murdered by Julia Gooders with a shotgun, a knife lying where it must have dropped from her hand as she collapsed, clad in an intruder's costume..."Doesn't make any sense," Barnaby said. Sitting on the edge of the bed, he rubbed at the beginning of a headache at the back of his head as he stared at the corpse and wallpaper behind it, a large smear of blood marking where Suzanna had slumped and then slid to the floor. "At all." When each new development approached, he believed he grasped the truth—only for those new facts to shatter any ideas he had constructed.

This woman had been the center of everything—the most willful of all his suspects—and she now lay dead at his feet. Karl Wainwright's heirs were becoming quite thin on the ground, and the count was only worse when Kenneth Gooders was considered. He was dead, Suzanna Chambers was dead, Tristan Goodfellow lay in a hospital bed hoping for word of a matching liver from the NHS.  _Waiting to be declared dead,_  Barnaby thought. Gregory Chambers, the man whose disappearance had started all of this, was certainly dead.

"The paramedics have calmed her down some," Bullard said, nodding his head at the staircase in the corridor. "She's in the sitting room, if you want to talk to her."

"Yes, George," Barnaby said as he stood, watching the first few footsteps he took with particular care to avoid the sheet half covering the body, "that would be the next thing to do."

The pathologist led the way out of the room just as he had led the way in. "Just remember, she  _is_  still quite shaken," he continued when they were almost at the bottom of the stair, stepping into another stuffy hall lined with dark wooden sideboards and bland reproductions of garden watercolors.

"No surprise there," Troy said under his breath.

The first words from the man in a few minutes forced Barnaby to grit his teeth, holding back the hiss of annoyance. "We need no statement of the obvious, Troy."

"But why would she do it—"

"You mean apart from the knife?" Bullard asked, cutting off Troy's question as he glanced over his shoulder into the sitting room. The paramedic who attended to Julia Gooders earlier was gone and a WPC had taken his place, standing her guard beside a curtained window immediately inside the door. Julia Gooders was curled into a ball in an armchair clutching her limbs to her body, probably to keep from quivering.

_Not this woman,_  Barnaby thought. "The knife is a part of it, but it's not the bigger reason."

"Then what is, sir?" Troy asked, shuffling a half step away from the pathologist.

Barnaby smiled, more of the pieces of this confused puzzle locking together into a single larger picture. "The reason for all of it?" And what a simple one it was. "Money."

"One of the most common motives there is," Bullard said with a quiet laugh. "Money and sex drive a lot of murders. See you tomorrow, Tom?"

Barnaby shuddered, almost gritting his teeth once more. God, it was the wrong word at the wrong time! He took a deep breath of half stale air. "Whenever you send me your first report."

"Bright and early, then." He clapped Barnaby on the shoulder, then nodded to Troy—"Sergeant."—before passing through the front door into the night.

Alone with Troy again—the other men and women in the foyer were too focused on evidence and notes and signatures—the anger rose once more. "In spite of—both of the motives Bullard mentioned," Barnaby said, his voice nearly shaking, "I think we only have to worry about money."

"How does that follow from Julia Gooders offing Suzanna Chambers?" Hardly finished speaking, Troy shook his head as he attempted to hold back a yawn.

_What time_ is _it?_  Barnaby wondered, though he didn't bother looking at his watch.  _Probably nearer eleven than ten._  "Not just money," he said quietly, "but wills, Troy."

"Wills?" His sergeant's mouth twisted. "Plural?"

The nascent end was spinning in Barnaby's skull, the rapidly forming solution pushing all other thoughts aside. "Of course."

As soon as they stepped into the sitting room, past the WPC standing at attention, Julia Gooders came to life, straightening her trembling body in the chair. She was dressed as the paramedics had found her, wearing a dressing gown over her nightclothes. "I didn't know who it was," she said, clutching the arms of her chair with white fingers, "I didn't know!"

Barnaby continued forward, though Troy remained just inside the door. "It's all right. You take it slowly, Mrs. Gooders," he said in an even voice, holding his hands steady. The last thing he needed now was to frighten his only witness—and remaining suspect. "Do you feel up to talking to us?"

She blinked several times and nodded instead of answering; Barnaby turned to Troy with a nod of his own. His sergeant closed the door to the foyer as Barnaby reached for a chair, settling it in front of the nervous woman. He perched on the edge when he sat, leaning forward to see her face better. Troy claimed a position at the end of the small sofa. "Now," Barnaby began, "why was there a shotgun in the bedroom?"

The woman held herself very still. "The phone call. It sounded like—like that puppet." Her breathing was faster and her tone was higher. "He said I was next—that he was coming to—" She began trembling again, staring wide-eyed into empty space as her breathing turned shallow.

"Mrs. Gooders..."

Julia nearly said something but stopped before a single word escaped, weaving her fingers together briefly. "I couldn't think—" Another sob almost escaped, but she swallowed and exhaled heavily. "So I took the gun from the gun cupboard." Her eyes were wide and terrified. "It was Gregory. He's alive."

The entire case had grown from the man's disappearance, but Barnaby had not expected his name to be raised now. "What do you mean?"

"They only ever found the hand!" she said, a few tears shining on her cheeks. "Maybe—Tristan never actually killed him, maybe he didn't want to admit that he'd messed up." She turned her head from Barnaby to Troy, then back. "And now Gregory's come back, and he's killing us one by one."

Barnaby glanced to Troy: the younger man's tired expression had vanished, now replaced by an intrigued lift of his eyebrows. But there it was at last, the confirmation of all his suspicions. It was always the final thrill, the final burst of momentum when the answer came at last and only the details remained to be explored.

" _He_  did this," Julia said, the sobs at last breaking through. "He made me do it!" She pressed her hand to her mouth. "Poor Suzanna."

Leaning back in his chair, Barnaby released a quiet sigh. "Are you telling me that you and Suzanna and Kenneth, your husband, and Tristan Goodfellow were all involved in a conspiracy to murder Gregory Chambers?"

Still shivering with suppressed tears, Julia's voice almost broke. "Yes." Her body relaxed as she looked down at the carpet, her arms suddenly slack. "Yes." As if the weight of his gaze was too heavy, she turned to Troy. "What was she doing with the knife?"

_The wrong person to look to for sympathy,_  Barnaby thought. After the interview, he would discuss the new will with Troy—no, that was best left until tomorrow. They still had another conversation to finish. "And you planned to kill Gregory Chambers because of the new will," Barnaby said. "Is that right?"

She slid forward in her chair. "I—I didn't want it to happen." Her nerves were rising again—or at least her hands were shaking. "But when they told me, it was too late—they'd done it!"

"Well, you could have told us about it." Barnaby felt the unhappy smile on his face. "But then, you wouldn't have inherited your quarter of the hotel, would you?"

She drew her body in tighter and smaller. Just above a whisper, Julia Gooders said, "He was my husband, chief inspector."

* * *

"She probably won't spend much time in prison," Barnaby said quietly, fishing in his pocket for his keys. Julia Gooders—now properly dressed—had been the first led from the house and quickly bundled into the back of a police vehicle. All the while, she had trembled. Barnaby hoped she had enough of whatever medication she took to last for several weeks; she would want every dose.

"Sir?" Troy asked, standing motionless beside him. "She's confessed to three murders, but what about the other two? She's the only one left—"

"I doubt any magistrate will call Suzanna Chambers' death a murder. And she was a conspirator in the other two cases—but given her husband and her mental state..."

"It's close enough to murder."

"If you believe that nervous woman"—Barnaby waved his hand to the car already pulling onto the road—"who killed Suzanna Chambers only after having the life frightened out of her by the voice of Mr. Punch—"

"That's an easy task."

"Do you really think she's killing her co-conspirators?"

"Why not?" Troy asked with a shrug of his shoulders. The movement was hardly visible despite the floodlights. "If she's the only one left, all she has to do is keep quiet."

"Which she most certainly did  _not_  do."

"Maybe she'd have to be all there to know that." Troy was struggling to find his own keys, digging to the bottom of one pocket before switching to the other. " 'Poor Gregory'?" he said, repeating one of Mrs. Gooders' last statements before she was cautioned. " ' _Poor Gregory_ '?"

"Indeed," Barnaby said with a nod. The words sounded more sincere coming from Troy.

"You'd think she was talking about a lost puppy, not someone she helped murder."

"No murderer likes to be reminded of the— _humanity_  of a victim."

Finally clutching his keys, Troy asked, "Are we back to bricks, sir?"

"If they help your education, then we are."

"You'd think she'd come up with a better way to think about him." His sergeant glanced at his watch, and Barnaby resisted the urge to do the same. It must be well past eleven.

"You can't always understand them," Barnaby said softly.

Troy tucked his hands in his jacket pockets against the chilly night air. "So what's all the trouble about with this new will?"

"What do you mean, Troy?"

"Who inherits, sir, if not the people who expected to?"

"That's the right question."

A small grin spread across the man's face. "Thank you, sir—"

"But damned if I know," Barnaby added.

"Do you think Gregory Chambers was the sole heir, then?"

"Haven't the slightest idea. We won't know anything more until we see the document.  _If_ "—Barnaby raised a finger into the air—"we see it."

"You think it's been destroyed, sir?"

"Of course, Troy, use your head!" Barnaby said, beginning to pace anew. Troy had come a long way in the last couple of years, but he still sometimes refused to believe what was staring him in the face. "They killed a man to conceal it—if the will surfaced, the murder and all their plans meant nothing."

"But maybe they didn't!" Troy said loudly, taking a step away from Barnaby's path. "You just said I shouldn't try to understand everything they do—"

"That is true, but I don't see the planners of such a precise crime succumbing to complete foolishness. Finding one of them with that will—and you can be sure Tristan took it off him—is as good as a confession."

That was the truth of it, though: there was no accounting for some choices, no matter how foolhardy. And not just regarding the crimes daily laid before him, for the mystification had crept into his own life as of late. Barnaby ran a hand over his face again. And it  _was_  a mystery, a question he doubted would ever receive an answer even if he found a way to put it to his daughter. God only knew what response awaited him from Troy—or if one would be forthcoming at all!

The bile was turning in his stomach, long since finished digesting the new recipe for  _s_ _paghetti alla puttanesca_  Joyce had experimented with for dinner. It had stopped protesting its ill treatment hours ago, but still grumbled in anticipation of a cooked breakfast at the canteen in the morning. "I think we're done for tonight, Troy," Barnaby said, ignoring the quiet complaints in his abdomen.

"Didn't you say that earlier today, sir?"

Barnaby nodded. "I did. Hopefully it's true this time." At least now, his stomach was bothered by worthwhile troubles, not—well, thinking about it would only make it worse. If that was possible. "Bullard should have some details for us tomorrow morning."

"Are there that many we don't know already?" Troy asked. He had shifted his keys to his left hand where he twisted them around his fingers. Now, he thrust his right hand into his jacket pocket once more, searching for something else—but his hand was empty when he removed it.

Together, they walked toward the dwindling collection of cars parked in the middle of the grass, Troy's well away from Barnaby's. "Probably not, but it's always good to know all of them," the chief inspector said, opening the driver's door of his vehicle.

"I suppose."

The man was already on his way to his own car, his dark-clad figure melting into the shadows when Barnaby spoke again. "And Troy?"

Troy turned back, a small rectangular object lying flat in his right palm.  _A mobile. Of course._  "Yes, sir?"

"No more phone calls tonight."

"Sir?" Even over the distance, Barnaby recognized the confusion. Or obfuscation.

"You heard what I said." He did not sit but almost collapsed into the driver's seat, exhaustion threatening to devour him. There would never be the right moment to finish this discussion with Troy—he remembered that much—but this was truly the  _wrong_  one. "Good night, Sergeant."

Barnaby's mind was already spinning with new revelations, new murderers, newly confirmed innocence—and the need for a  _new_  suspect. He had no space in his skull to spare for Cully and Troy.


	27. Chapter 26: Reflections Again

**Chapter 26: Reflections Again**

She hated the click of the lock as she turned the bolt, the warmth of the sitting room as she turned on the light, even the empty silence as it enveloped her. It was all fine—there was nothing wrong with anything—but Cully despised it now. This was not where she wanted to be, at home. But she hardly knew where— No, that was a lie; she knew _exactly_ where she wanted to be, and the clarity was unnerving.

Rather than wait for Gavin to return to his car and watch him vanish from her life at the end of another day, she had dashed inside as soon as he turned away. She couldn't watch, not after...The thoughts churned in her mind even as she clenched her eyes, trying to shove them aside. The skin she had touched only in her imagination had become real and hot under her fingertips, and not even her breath had been her own. When his hand reached her waist, sliding beneath her shirt, goose flesh had risen along its path. His hands and fingers had learned the curves of her body from her breasts to her hips as hers danced over his chest.

And god, what else could have been— _would_ have been—if not for that phone call? Hours—a night—spent sharing her body and herself completely with him, relishing every moment? She knew that much. But what he had said a minute or so later as the possibilities faded, that was troubling her more than anything. _"_ _The way it always will be_ _."_ Always. The word was pounding in her mind, running through her head—

"Tom?" Cully stumbled back at the sound, her back pressing against the door as her mother's voice rang through the house. The words were only broken by the sound of feet in the upstairs corridor. "Did you forget something?"

Her pulse had raced at the unexpected words, but now began to slow. "No, it's me, Mum."

"Cully?" At the top of the stairs, her mother appeared, a robe over her nightclothes and her hair tousled. "Where on earth have you been?"

"Rehearsal went quite late," Cully said, pushing herself away from the door. The evening and the hour had at last crashed down on her, settling on her shoulders like a weight.

"Until just now? It's gone ten."

She shook her head as she forced herself to take another step forward. "Just until eight thirty. I don't know how long Gavin was waiting for me—"

"It's nice of him to have waited _that_ long," her mother said quietly, folding her fingers around the bannister as she started down the stairs.

_I don't think anything could have kept him away,_ Cully thought. As desperate as his hands had been on her skin, she could think of nothing that would have stood in his way. And there was nothing she wanted to, either.

"Cully?"

"I called before then," she said sharply, taking a few quick steps into the center of the sitting room as her mother reached the bottom of the staircase. "I made him something for dinner, that's all. To make it up to him."

"That was very kind of you."

Blood rushed to her face, hot and surely vibrant. "It wasn't any trouble, Mum."

"I'm sure he appreciated it."

Cully pulled her bag from her shoulder, opening it and thrusting a hand in, searching for nothing in particular; it kept her face down and hidden. In Gavin's kitchen less than two hours ago, she had forced herself to stop speaking. _"If you keep saying that, Gavin, Mum will really want to keep you around."_ It had been the wrong thing to say then, but with each day that passed, it felt truer.

But...no, it was beyond reason to believe _that_. Hoping the flush was fading from her cheeks, Cully drew one deep breath, then another before looking up again. "It was either that or leftover takeaway for him."

Her mother paused a foot or so from her. "He did get your father's call, didn't he?"

Gavin's fingers had been drifting along the buttons on her blouse—one or two had given way under their movements—when they both recognized the sound of his mobile's ring. The heat had been pulsing in her abdomen, worse than an ache and _aching_ for relief. Just remembering it, Cully shivered, and the warmth of his hands on her skin rose again to push the chill away.

"Are you cold, dear?"

Cully shook her head, curling and uncurling the fingers of her right hand. They were feeling his face again. "Uh—no." They were pressed to his neck again, now sliding beneath his shirt collar. "He's driving to Midsomer Magna now," she said, her mouth suddenly parched.

Her mother crossed to the window, pushing aside one of the curtain's edges. Cully turned to follow her, just catching the faint glow of the street lamps gleaming through the glass. "I hope they're not out there for too long tonight," she said softly, letting the fabric fall back after a moment.

"So do I." Whilst she had never seen Gavin as drawn into work as her father, Cully knew the exhaustion was inevitable. At times, a policeman could be seized by a case, almost swallowed up by it. It had worried her mother for decades and was now worrying _her_. And there was nothing she was able to do for—

"You know how your father gets when he's so involved with a case."

_Dad?_ Crossing her arms over her stomach—trying to tamp down the slow burn still smoldering there—Cully swallowed. Well, of course that was what her mother meant. She had no reason to be worried about Gavin. "Do—" The remainder of the question failed to form in her mouth. Her mother had asked hardly any questions and barely appeared concerned. "Do you have any idea what's going on, Mum?" she finished. Her father would have made small, nagging inquires. But now...nothing.

"No," her mother said, opening the curtain once more, "your father didn't know much when he left. Why?"

"Curious, that's all."

The curtain swung closed again. "I expect we'll find out more tomorrow, if either of them has anything else to say."

"Do they ever not?"

"He doesn't tell us everything, Cully."

"I suppose."

"Does Gavin talk much about work?" her mother asked.

"Some," Cully said, a yawn suddenly threatening to escape. "Probably more than Dad." That was the simple answer. Gavin had set out the entire case for her this evening, revealing more than her father ever had.

"Go to bed, dear," her mother said, resting a hand on Cully's shoulder. "You look dead on your feet. Is your rehearsal the same time tomorrow?"

"Of course. He never starts later, just earlier sometimes."

Kissing her cheek lightly, her mother said, "Good night, then."

"Good night, Mum."

As her mother returned upstairs, Cully headed into the kitchen, unexpectedly thirsty. Not bothering to set down her bag, she reached into a cupboard for a glass and thrust it under the tap, half filling it with water. The first sip chased away the worst of the thirst, but a new hollowness remained.

_You can't expect anything else,_ Cully thought, draining the last few drops of water from her glass. _It never ends—you've seen it all your life._ Reaching out to set the empty glass by the sink, she nearly dropped it instead as her grasp suddenly loosened. What did that mean? It was true, every word of it, but thinking about Gavin in that way was something—unfamiliar. What was it, a month since he had wandered back into her life? And that was the right word for it, _wander._ Their paths had crossed on an ordinary day, for a single second that could have passed like every other if _she_ had not chosen to shout his name. Would he have seen her—said anything at all? God, she hoped so, but she couldn't be sure. But that moment no longer mattered, for her unconsidered choice to call out to him had set them along this route.

Each time they had reached this edge, the fall had been steeper and faster, and what waited at the bottom of the chasm was murkier and more confused. _You don't even know where you're starting from,_ Cully thought as she lifted her hand from the glass, now safely on the counter. She couldn't, not if she didn't understand what had compelled her to say anything that afternoon on the street. How was she to know where they were heading tomorrow—or the day after, or the week or month or year that followed—if the beginning remained mired in fog? She knew only one thing: his touch was devastating, and it was driving her mad, its presence and its absence.

The nagging disappointment drifted aside for a short time as Cully showered and quickly brushed her teeth. Her mind sank into the final tasks of the day, each movement and step becoming a distraction. But in short order, she was curled up in bed, thumbing her way through the first act of _Pygmalion_ another time.

No matter how many times she read it—and she did so almost every night—she still stumbled over a handful of lines. Cully suspected the trouble was not with the words themselves but the way they were written; she nearly had to translate Eliza's lines at the beginning and had written acceptable versions in proper English alongside the director's notes. Even if her spoken words had to be garbled for a time to remain true to Eliza's character, at least now she knew what she was saying.

This evening, her eyes were just skimming the pages, refusing to make sense of the letters and words and sentences. On her bedside table, her mobile lay silent. After each attempt to read more than a few passages, her gaze returned to the quiet device. And as it remained quiet, she let her mind wander back to the play.

Cully left behind Eliza's lines written in her London dialect, again grateful that Shaw had chosen to write most of it plainly. _'Who's trying to deceive you? I called him Freddy or Charlie same as you might yourself if you was talking to a stranger and wished to be'_ —

The phone came to life, the electronic ring breaking her already limited concentration. Stretching out one arm, Cully just reached the table, pulling the phone to her and pushing the answer button with her thumb. "Hello?" she said, pressing the receiver hard against her left ear.

"Hi, Cully?"

She hadn't expected it to be anyone else, but hearing his voice remained almost an unexpected pleasure. "You finally made it out alive?" she asked, the play's pages falling closed on her fingers.

He let out a ragged sigh. "Better than some."

Leaning against the wall, Cully crossed her legs, resting her left elbow on her knee. "What happened?"

"One of our suspects was just killed," Gavin said quietly. "By _another_ one of our suspects."

" _What?_ " The book dropped out of her grasp and she pushed it aside with her hand.

"I thought it'd have been the other way round."

Her eyes narrowed. Sometimes, Cully thought he forgot that she did not have all the information laid out in front of her as he did. "That means what?"

Gavin's first words were unintelligible, muffled by the rumble of a large engine. "...was probably the driving force behind all it," he continued, the din fading into a gentle hum. "And she was about to off Julia Gooders first."

Rolling her eyes, Cully asked, "And _she_ is?"

"The last one left, and the one most likely to go barmy."

"You do have a way with words, Gavin." One of her feet began to tingle; Cully straightened her legs and the pins and needles began to throb. "But why would she—or whoever your dead suspect is—want to kill her?"

"Don't have the foggiest. But Mrs. Gooders claims she had the life frightened out of her by a phone call from Mr. Punch."

Twitching her still numb toes, Cully smiled. "You really hate those puppets."

"It's nothing to do with me," Gavin said. She supposed he was frowning now, or beginning to pace as Punch and Judy rose in his mind anew. "They're awful little things."

"After all the things you see, Gavin, those bother you more?"

"More than some things. But at least we know what happened to Gregory Chambers."

_He definitely forgets,_ she thought. "The man who disappeared?"

"That's the one."

Feeling was inching back into her foot. "And?"

"Killed by all of them—for money."

Cully sighed; it was a wretched reason to be murdered, if there _was_ a good one. "Do you ever come across a different motive?"

"Sometimes." A burst of chatter came through the connection. The crunching of gravel followed, and the voices faded away. "Bullard's probably right. He says money and sex drive most of them."

Her face began to burn, and Cully felt that same tight, demanding knot buried deeper in her torso. "Probably," she said, the air in her room suddenly thick and difficult to breathe. "So one part of it's solved."

"The small part. There's still the rest of them to deal with."

Cully moved the phone to her other ear, not holding it so close, though his voice had been quiet just now. "Are you any closer with them?"

"It'd be a nice change. But we don't have many more suspects to spare."

The new surge of tension was loosening, her foot was fully returning to life, and the length of the day was threatening to overwhelm her completely. "You sound like you're talking about Cluedo."

"It's true."

"It's a terrible thing to say," she said as she shook her head. After all these years, it was no surprise he had become accustomed to witnessing death and violence. More than a few comments had been made about Midsomer's murder rate, once or twice even on the BBC. Sometimes she wondered why her father had not chosen to transfer ages ago.

"Whatever _you_ say." After a few moments, Cully wondered if the call had been dropped. But then he began to speak again. "Look, Cully, about earlier..."

The silence took over another time, broken by the same garbled voices and engines coming and going near to him. Even with the noise, Cully thought she heard him breathing. "Remember," she said, "you're not supposed to say you're sorry, Gavin."

The silence swelled again, but only briefly. "Even if I am?" he asked.

"I guess it depends."

"On what?"

Somewhere in the house, a floorboard creaked. If Gavin was finally about to leave the crime scene, perhaps her father had already departed. Not that it much mattered. "What are you sorry about?" she asked. The creaking did not sound again.

"I—don't really need to tell you, do I, Cully?" he asked, even quieter now.

She wondered how red his face was now. Earlier, it had been tinted pink as the heat and knots and need built, and hers must have looked the same. "No, you don't." Those knots had nearly been released as desire stood ready to spill over into the real world. With a few more minutes—perhaps just moments—the world would have shifted, with Gavin transformed from a man into a lover. And, in making love with Gavin, how much of that need would finally have been released, satisfied at last? How much more would have remained unsatiated? Cully pressed her free hand to her calf to stop its trembling. "Then I'll see you tomorrow?"

"I already said you would."

"Just making sure," she said, twisting a short strand of hair around her index finger. "Good night, Gavin."

"Good night, Cully."

Neither of them lingered after the farewells were completed, though Cully did not switch her mobile off when she laid it on her bedside table again. It was silly—she knew he would not call back—but something stayed her hand when she considered reaching for it. She _wanted_ it to remain on. Instead, she picked up the play another time, flipping through it to the page she had been reading before; the words were just as blurred, and pretending to read them was pointless.

As she dropped the book onto the table beside her mobile, Cully did not struggle against the yawn growing in her chest; there was no use in fighting it any longer. Turning off the lamp, she tugged the sheets up to her shoulders. Her eyelids fell but sleep taunted her, dancing just beyond her reach despite her exhaustion. But Gavin was there, as real as if he lay beside her now. One of his arms was looped around her waist as his breath tickled her neck.

Turning onto her side, Cully opened her eyes—and she was alone again, only the memories of warmth and hands and hungry kisses left with her. But the more she struggled against those new memories, the sharper and clearer they became. In that dark place between dreams and consciousness, they were almost real.


	28. Chapter 27: Whiteout

**Chapter 27: Whiteout**

The squad room of Causton CID was sometimes cramped and noisy, particularly when a large case commandeered the interest of the entire force. Men and women milled about, elbowing one another—sometimes accidentally, sometimes purposefully—and shouting over the din of other raised voices. Copies of reports and crime scene photographs were handed out and reviewed. Thoughts were shared, considered, dismissed, and taken under advisement. A week ago, Troy recalled, it had all gone on without them. He and Barnaby had spent those days either in Midsomer Magna or driving there and back again, the chaos breaking out after they left and wrapping up before they returned. Only a few snippets of it had played out for their observation. This morning, though, CID had returned to its usual state of quiet focus, with the occasional burst of excitement, at last calm again.

Taking another sip of his tea, fortified with milk and several sugars, Troy turned his attention to the next page on his desk. The findings were unsurprising: the footprints left at the most recent crime scene were too smeared to match to any shoe. Every report today—he had lost count of how many footprint analyses he had struggled to make sense of—acknowledged that same fact. _Lucky bastard,_ he thought, pushing his mug forward and reaching for the stack of fingerprint reports.

Perhaps "lack of fingerprints reports" was a better term. After more than fifteen break-ins, their suspect—whoever he was—had still left fingerprints at only two scenes. SOCO had spent most of their time identifying prints left by the householders and their close friends and relations. "He's getting better," Troy muttered, shuffling the pages together. And they were just left chasing their tails, hoping to find _anything_ in the handful of clues he—

"Better is not the right word for it, Troy."

Troy glanced up from the text, his gaze drifting across the room. At his own desk, Barnaby was peering at a pile of reports as well. _All those leads going nowhere,_ Troy thought, finally sitting straight again and lifting his shoulders. It was hardly gone ten, but his neck and spine already ached after reviewing details and notes for more than two hours. Whenever a case loomed large—particularly in the chief inspector's mind—the work day began early and concluded late, no arguments accepted.

Another rustle of paper drew him back to his boss. "There's still nothing here," Barnaby said, shoving his chair back and rising to his feet.

"There must be _something_ ," Troy said as he reached for his mug, the ceramic still warm to the touch. "You can't commit this many burglaries without leaving something behind. There's those fingerprints."

Turning to the file cabinet behind his desk, Barnaby shook his head. "Useless without something to compare them to."

"It's someplace to start—"

Metal squealed as Barnaby yanked a drawer open, his fingers running over the manila folders and pushing them toward the back as he decided they were unimportant. "We've started there a few times already, Troy. And we're still nowhere."

_We've just wasted a lot of time,_ Troy thought, finishing most of his tea in a single swallow to conceal his frown. The past week had been a blur of interviews, task force meetings—at the beginning, anyway—and endless hours of reading reports. The task force had convened the week before whilst they were chasing poisonous mushrooms and vile puppets and conspirators all around Midsomer Bloody Magna. The Detective Chief Superintendent, at last thoroughly disgusted by the lack of progress, had assigned all available officers to the case. Troy suspected the man had regretted his choice to give the murder investigation to Barnaby; in all their years working together, only a handful of Barnaby's cases had been relegated to the status of unsolved, and several had been reopened and solved at a later date.

Sergeant Brierley and the DI with whom she was partnered—Troy never remembered his name, only that he was an annoying git—had led for several days, but with their final open case only requiring the final paperwork, Barnaby and he had been reassigned to its helm. _Must really think he can solve anything,_ Troy said to himself. _Not that it matters._ The task force disbanded three days afterward, leaving only the pair of them to sift through the material and find nothing.

Picking up a yellow marker pen, Troy ran it over a pair of dates on the list of incidents he had made, the letters smudging slightly. The fingerprints had appeared at those two break-ins near the start all those weeks ago, never again. "Then what else is there to look at, sir?" he asked, pressing the cap of the pen on again. The plastic left a brief impression on his thumb.

"These break-ins happen in clusters." Barnaby's voice was muffled, almost echoing back from the file cabinet. "Never just one—always several. What question should you ask?"

Troy drummed his fingers on his desk, running the rhythm from his little finger to his thumb. "Why not just the one at a time?"

Two or three break-ins had occurred as they were searching for the culprit in the disappearance of Gregory Chambers and everything that had passed in its wake. One had even been committed the evening the case at Midsomer Magna had at last been put to rest, in one of the posher neighborhoods of Causton. There, crime was only read about, never experienced. Until that late night call only an hour after he finally arrived home—further interviews with Woody and Clarice and the first pieces of the endless stream of paperwork had held him at CID until after nine—he had so briefly entertained the thought that his time might soon be his own again. Or rather, his and Cully's; that hope had dissipated quickly. "It'd be less obvious," Troy added, gritting his teeth as he ran his eyes over dates once more. By now, he could almost list them from memory.

"An excellent thing to ask."

"Thank you—"

"But that's not the one I meant. We'll know that when we answer the question you still haven't asked," Barnaby said, slamming the drawer without removing a thing. Troy cringed as the metal screamed again. "Why do these episodes have clear beginnings and endings?"

"Sir?"

Barnaby set his elbow on the edge of the filing cabinet, gazing at the wall for a moment. "We know he had a reason to begin—money, thrill, any number of possibilities."

"So that's why he started."

Barnaby nodded. "Yes. What's the next logical thing to ask?"

"You mean why would he stop, sir?" Troy's skin still crawled, the sound seared into his skull.

"As you should know by now, they never do on their own."

"It must be possible he is—"

"Possible," the chief inspector said, sitting in his chair once more and reaching for his coffee mug, "but unlikely. The best way to stop a criminal is to put him in prison."

"I suppose."

"But"—Barnaby paused, taking a large drink of his coffee—"we know he can't be, because those fingerprints are still unidentified."

"Be too easy, wouldn't it?" Troy asked, swallowing as the foul taste of the station's coffee bubbled back through his memory. How the chief inspector drank it without anything added was beyond him. The stuff was vile even with enough sugar for Cully to worry his teeth would crack.

Pushing the mug across his desk, Barnaby folded his fingers together and set his chin atop his knuckles. "It's what they pay us for." A hiss of disgust escaped from Troy's throat. "You might not like it, but it's true."

_The pay might not be worth it,_ Troy thought, shoving the remaining unread reports beneath his list of incidents. Though the workdays had begun to shorten again, they still lasted nearly twelve hours on average. For the past week, talking to Cully had been rare and seeing her had transformed into an impossible task. Each afternoon, she rang with the same query. Sometimes, he took the call; more often, he was unable to do so. And whenever he answered—basked in the warmth of her voice—his response was inevitable. _"Cully, I can't."_ The first time, he had prefaced it with _"I'm sorry"_ , but she reminded him never to say it again. Afterward, he only added that word in his own mind. Her response was always quiet, simply, _"Then I'll see you tomorrow?"_ He never answered affirmatively, making a promise he doubted he could keep. _"If I can"_ was all he ever offered. At least that much was true.

"Then what's _your_ idea? Why does he start and stop?"

Troy swallowed, clearing the last of the tea's bitterness from his mouth as a new idea entered his head. "What if—sir, what—" He paused, flattening his fingers against the top of his desk. An officer whose name he didn't know passed between him and Barnaby, the weight of the chief inspector's stare lessening as it was broken. The new possibility spun faster, almost out of control as it coalesced into a single thought. "What if—even if he's not in prison, sir—he _can't_ keep on with it?" Troy asked as the officer reached the corridor at the other side of the squad room, allowing his boss's gaze to return. "At least sometimes."

Barnaby's chair creaked as he leaned back, his elbows coming away from his desk. "How so?"

"What if he's just not here?"

His eyes narrowing, the chief inspector pressed a hand to his mouth. "Where would he be?"

Troy blinked as the threads weaving themselves together shuddered and ceased to move, the thought paralyzed. "I—have no idea, sir."

"'No idea' is _not_ the right answer," Barnaby said, sitting straight again and reaching for a pen, "particularly to your own question."

"But why else would he start and stop and start again?"

"Why wouldn't he go on with it wherever he is?" Barnaby scribbled something on a piece of paper.

Troy shrugged his shoulders, the ache at the joints loosening then spreading through his muscles. "Maybe he is—"

"You can't really believe that."

"But why not?"

Barnaby slammed his hand against the desk, the pen rattling against the wood as Troy's heart raced at the clatter. "It doesn't make any sense. If he's as careless elsewhere, those fingerprints would come back to us."

"Yes—"

"And we both know those prints are useless right now."

Troy glanced to his list of incidents once more, his eyes lingering on the two marked in yellow at the top. Fingerprints had appeared right at the start, like their burglar wasn't yet certain what to do and how to do it. "He hasn't left them every time, sir, just twice. And at the beginning."

"Which proves we aren't dealing with a criminal mastermind," the chief inspector said, scratching another note on the page. "Masterminds aren't very common, Troy, criminal or otherwise."

"Yes—"

"Surely _you_ know that by now."

Barnaby said nothing else, instead returning his attention to his mug of coffee. And really, he had said very little over the past week, to Troy's surprise and relief. _Probably because now he knows exactly what's going on,_ Troy thought, crumpling his list of incidents. They were both either at CID, bent over their desks with increasingly bleary eyes despite numerous cups of coffee and tea, or leaving at the end of another interminable day. He suspected Barnaby awaited Cully's phone call each afternoon as much as he did, eager to be certain that she would find her own way home. With their desks only a few feet apart, Troy never attempted to conceal who was on the other end of each phone conversation; it was an impossible task.

Not that the chief inspector had let things go. Over the past week, in the midst of the paperwork to conclude the case at Midsomer Magna and the new mass of burglary inquiries, Troy had found himself in the morgue more times than he had imagined possible, interrogating Bullard about the smallest details.

The precise saw marks on what remained of Gregory Chambers' body.

The exact dosage of medication Evelyn Pope had taken to end her life.

The extent of the damage to Tristan Goodfellow's liver; the man had died two days after Evelyn's suicide.

The actual quantity of blood Kenneth Gooders had lost, though Bullard was unable to answer this question.

Every note in the file required further information from the pathologist, Barnaby seemed to have decided, and a phone call simply would not do, no matter how it aggravated Bullard. The last time Barnaby had sent him on a useless quest for information, the pathologist had turned him around and sent him right back without an answer, just an irritated demand for the chief inspector to stop interrupting his work. That respite Troy had welcomed, for the morgue was always home to a dozen or more things that threatened to nauseate him. Whether it was the smells the disinfectant could not conquer, the grinding of the saw as Bullard or one of his assistants sliced through a breastbone, or the stains on the pathologist's gloves when he had just stepped away from an examination, the experience clung like a fog that wanted hours to dissipate. But it was easier not to argue with Barnaby and, at the very least, it gave him a moment away from the uneasy silence now so often lying between them.

And sometimes, when reception returned to his mobile as he mounted the stairs from the morgue to the squad room, Troy sent Cully a message. It was never much. " _How are you today?"_ _"Anything going on this evening?"_ _"Has your director changed his mind again?"_ Most often, if the chief inspector was not glaring at him when his mobile rang, Cully could offer an answer before she asked her own question. But on those days when he expected Barnaby to tap his watch impatiently and prepare to send him to the morgue another time—Troy knew another trip awaited him today, despite Bullard's protests—there was no time for her to answer a question before or after asking her own.

A phone in the squad room blared and Troy sat straight up in his chair, his pulse racing anew as his mind returned to CID and the investigation before them. "Maybe—" He stopped, drawing a deeper breath as he went over his thoughts again. "Maybe he doesn't have a choice—maybe there's something keeping him from continuing, wherever he is."

Barnaby drained the dregs of his coffee before he said, "That's a little fanciful again, Troy."

"But think about it, sir!" Troy grabbed his wadded up list of incidents, peeling apart the edges and wrinkles before flattening it atop his desk. Three or four at a time, then nothing, just as he remembered. "That idiot who got himself stuck on a pitchfork*, he'd have kept at it until we arrested him. There was nothing else stopping him."

"Yes..."

"And there's something stopping this one."

"Let's allow that you're right," Barnaby said, dropping his pen. "What's the point in coming and going so often?"

"It's a small county, sir."

"True, but what's that got to do with the price of fish?"

Troy sifted through his reports and lists, shoving aside SOCO's findings and the disappointing results offered by the forensic lab. "Whatever he's stolen, he doesn't have a lot of choice about what he does with it."

"Go on," Barnaby said, leaning forward again.

"Wherever he's going, maybe he's selling it there," Troy said, his hand at last falling on the folder of inventory lists. "Look at it all, sir."

The shuffling of paper floated across the room as the chief inspector searched through his folders. He lifted one after a moment, opening it and removing a page. "I am, Troy."

Paintings of great sentimental but little monetary value, figurines, antique silverware, expensive bottles of scotch...Dozens of such items appeared time and again. "It would catch attention in Midsomer—because we know to look for it—but nothing is so unique that it would send up red flags a few counties over. Especially if he's careful about it."

"Careful enough not to sell everything at once or near to where he stole it, but not careful enough to avoid leaving fingerprints anywhere?" Barnaby asked, his eyebrows rising.

"He could have taken a lot of other things—more expensive—"

"He's getting the best times for caution confused."

Troy released a breath in a slow hiss. Why did he even bother sharing his ideas? "Didn't you say I shouldn't try to understand them, sir?"

"Indeed, I did." Barnaby ran a hand over his face, still peering at the list on his desk. "Coming and going like that will put up its own red flags, Troy."

"Maybe he has a legitimate reason for it," Troy said. Returning his marker pen to the tidy pile in front of him, he took a Biro, writing _Why?_ at the top of his wrinkled list. "A job or something like that."

"It's an interesting possibility."

Troy did not attempt to conceal the smile growing on his face. "Thank you—"

"Any idea how you'll prove it?" Barnaby asked, and Troy's smile vanished. "And, really—how careful do you think he would be if he's been fool enough to leave his fingerprints at all?"

Troy scratched the word on the paper again. "But you just said he's no criminal master—"

"He isn't," Barnaby said, shaking his head. "So why would he be so cautious in the aftermath?"

"I don't know, sir," Troy said, his pen nearly breaking through the paper as he wrote _Why?_ a third time.

"That's another question you have to answer before you go any further." Barnaby lifted his coffee mug, scowling as he did. _Bully for you,_ Troy thought. "People are either cautious or careless," Barnaby continued. "They tend _not_ to be a mixture of both. I trust you understand that from personal experience."

_God, he's not going to let it alone,_ Troy thought, capping his pen and returning it to the pile as well. "Some," he said quietly.

Barnaby picked up his reading glasses, setting them on his nose as he brought the report he was reading closer. "More than just some, I dare say."

The chief inspector was right, though Troy swallowed an angry sigh at the realization. His mind was hardly his own at times, like something was pulling it apart, driving him into happy madness. When he spent even a few minutes with Cully, he more than forgot himself. The world itself was in flux, forgetting what should be and what was best. Laid out before them both, the future was in question as well, circling around from the past. There was a world with her in his life, a world without her, and one in which they wandered between those possibilities, uncertain of even the next day. And with each moment that caution and sense wavered before disappearing completely, Troy knew—feared?—that they were another step closer to hurtling down the path from the present confusion to a firm answer.

Even though Barnaby's desk was several feet from his, Troy did not lift his gaze from the tidy stacks of folders and papers and the neat pile of pens. If he looked up, he might not say anything at all. "Sir, about last—"

"Coffee, Troy." Now Troy's face rose to see Barnaby lifting his coffee mug, nodding at it. "If this is the state of your thoughts right now, you could probably do with some, too."

"I don't—"

Setting his mug down again, the chief inspector returned to his reports. "Black, no sugar."

"Sir—"

" _No_ sugar," Barnaby said, turning to the next page.

Pushing back his chair and standing slowly, Troy let his protests remain silent even as a few vertebrae in his spine cracked. "Yes, sir."

* * *

* "Judgment Day", S03E03


	29. Chapter 28: Eyes On the Road

**Chapter 28: Eyes On the Road**

As she gathered her belongings from the cluster of bags and jackets and sweaters, Cully resisted the urge to reach for her mobile. Rehearsal had ended for the day—the exhausted cast and crew had already begun to chatter about families and after work drinks—but there was no time for anything yet.  _Just another evening of criticism,_  she thought, dropping her bag on her shoulder as she returned to the auditorium.

That was exactly what happened. Paul Pearson, though an excellent director known throughout the country, rarely remembered his cast and crew members had families and homes and lives to return to outside of the theater. Or, some of the crew theorized when he was out of earshot, he just ignored that fact. Once they had all settled in the front few rows of seats with their bags and jackets, leaving only him on the stage, the haranguing began.

The short list of what was to remain the same went first: Higgins' carelessness with Eliza was spot on; Mrs. Higgins' final sympathy for Eliza and her irritation with her son were perfection; Col. Pickering's passion for the languages of the subcontinent was exceedingly well done. A voluminous list of what needed to change followed, covering almost every other interaction in the play, to say nothing of the cast's apparent inability to properly portray any of the characters' deeper emotions to the audience and the crew's incompetence with regards to lighting and sound effects. When she took her seat, Cully had drawn a notebook and a pen from her bag, ready to jot down a handful of notes. By the time Pearson finished, several pages were covered with words, half of them dashed through as he changed his mind mid-sentence.

"As you know," he said after his lists were completed, "tech starts tomorrow morning. Early." Cully released a low breath as she tucked the notebook and pen away. A low murmur spread through the men and women seated around her, mostly groans and sighs, though she heard one of the lighting men a few feet away say, "Bastard couldn't start it before now?", and another of the tech crew mutter, "There goes the pub tonight." Pressing his fists against his hips, Pearson's eyes narrowed as his gaze raked across them all; Cully nearly flinched. "Bright and early—seven—and ready to go," he continued loudly over the new rumble of wordless complaints. " _And_  ready for a late night."

Pearson did not linger, instead reaching for his mobile phone and dialing a number, rushing off the stage before he began to speak. The cast and crew, still whispering and grumbling about the loss of the weekend, soon followed. When she reached the center aisle, finally beginning to exit the maze of folding seats and arm rests, Cully paused as she opened the contacts list on her own phone, quickly scrolling to  _Gavin_  and pressing the receiver to her ear as the call went through. After the third ring echoed shrilly in her ear, the hope began to fade; when the fifth passed and his voice mail took the call instead—"Detective Sergeant Troy, and I cannot—" was all she bothered to wait for—hope dissipated entirely.

"Of course," she said quietly, shoving her phone into the back pocket of her jeans as she paused, staring at the carpet. For the past week, she didn't understand why she had bothered calling at all. If he answered, the only response he ever had was  _no_. Not that it was his fault—or all his fault—

Cully nearly jumped as a hand touched her shoulder, and her thigh slammed into the corner of a chair as she twisted around. A high pitched gasp of surprise escaped the person behind her.  _Of course,_  she thought, squinting at the new face beneath the auditorium lights.  _Who else?_  "I'm sorry, Alana," Cully said as she rubbed her hand over the stinging spot on her leg.

"No, I didn't mean to startle you." The young woman portraying Clara—Alana Moyle—was frowning at her, wringing her pale fingers. "I didn't see you stop. Are you all right?"

"I'm fine," Cully said, gently pressing her fingertips to the patch of muscle now beginning to ache.

"Are you sure?"

"I'm sure." Ignoring the deepening pain, Cully took a few steps down the aisle. Her leg twinged; it would bruise, nothing more. "It's fine."

"But—"

"Really."

Pulling her hands apart, Alana began to twist the fingers of her right hand into a fist, now tapping each digit along her thumb. "Is something wrong, Cully?"

Cully had dropped her head to search for her keys and bus pass in her bag—almost everything had migrated to the bottom when she removed and later returned her notebook and pen—and she looked up at the question. "I'm sorry?"

"Is something wrong?"

"Why would there be?" Cully asked, shaking her head.

Alana slowed the tapping of her fingers as she chewed her lip, but the pace soon returned. "You've been a little down the last week or so."

"It's nothing—"

"He hasn't been here to pick you up at all."

"Really, Alana," Cully said loudly as she closed her own hand into a fist, "it's nothing."

Alana opened her hand as she dropped it, though her fingers still twitched. "Are you sure?"

Cully did not attempt to conceal her sigh. It was only reasonable that they had noticed his absence over the past few days; his presence had been almost standard at the end of each rehearsal session. "Gavin's just been—quite busy."

"He wasn't before?"

"No." Cully shook her head again. "They haven't been this busy for a few weeks. Maybe a few months."

"They?" Alana asked as she took a few steps forward into the center aisle, her hand thrust into her own small bag, searching for something.

"Everyone at CID." That much was true, but how much more needed to be said? Nothing. As pleasant a person as Alana was, Cully knew not to mistake fellow members of cast or crew for friends. "For a while, he said they were all on just one case."

"All of them? That must have been a lot of people."

"I suppose it had to happen," Cully said. "They weren't getting anywhere on their own—and then they were investigating the murders at Midsomer Magna as well."

Alana had turned her gaze to her bag, no longer searching blindly, and when she looked up again, a ring of keys dangled from her grasp. "All that to-do around the Easterly Grange hotel?"

"Yes."

"Blimey," Alana said slowly, whistling after the word was finished. "That must have been a mess."

"It was." Slowly, Cully began to walk to the end of the aisle at the front of the theater, Alana beginning to follow her after a few moments. "He tried to talk me through everything that happened. I still think it's confusing."

"The newspaper had a fair explanation, Cully," the woman said, her footsteps quicker to make up the initial distance.

"Not of everything."

They had climbed the short set of stairs from the auditorium to the stage before Alana spoke again. "Cully," Alana said as they reached the back corner, "does your father work there too?"

Cully stopped, spinning around to look at her, the now forgotten ache in her leg returning as she twisted. "What do—"

The other woman's footsteps faltered and she had take a step back to keep them from colliding. "I just remembered seeing the name in the paper. Inspector Barnaby, something like that."

"He does," Cully said slowly. But god, what did it matter to her if the rest of the cast knew of the extra complication in her relationship with Gavin? Probably nothing. "Detective Chief Inspector Barnaby. He and Gavin have worked together for the past several years." And, really, even if they met as cast members in another play, how often would she see Alana after this run of  _Pygmalion_  was completed? "It's—how we met."

"Oh," Alana said, stepping back again. "He must like that—your dad, I mean."

Even with the obvious sarcasm, Cully rolled her eyes. "Not really."

"My dad has never really liked any of my boyfriends either." Alana laughed for a moment. "My mum thinks he's pickier than I am."

"My parents have never said much to me, even when I was younger."

"But to work with him every day..."

"We don't talk about it much," Cully said quickly, starting to head toward the far corners of off-stage again, her fingers itching to open her mobile. She hadn't thought of Alana as a busybody, but the sudden flurry of curiosity was beginning to prove her wrong. "Or I don't, at least."

"It must get old," Alana said, still following her.

"What?"

As Cully reached the door leading to the dressing and prop rooms, Alana added, "Avoiding the subject."

 _Really?_  Cully thought as she pushed the door open, the hinges squeaking harshly.  _I guess some people just have to say everything that comes into their heads at times._  "I suppose." It had been hard enough the past few weeks—just over a month—almost exhausting, certainly exasperating. And who knew what was to come in the future? No, Cully decided, her eyes boring into the floor and steps before her feet, that was too much to worry about right now when just the week ahead was uncertain.

Alana's voice and feet trailed behind her down the stairwell. "He's really been that busy?"

"That's the way it is when a case becomes this large." The words echoed up and down the concrete walls as they passed the entrance to the prop room and the corridor to the dressing rooms, and Cully was suddenly grateful that Alana had begun her interrogation when they were able to speak quietly and almost privately in the theater itself. If it had been in here, the entire company would know about it.

"I would have thought he could make some time for you," Alana said when they reached the bottom of the stairs. "I mean, if you're dating, he really should—"

"Alana, there aren't that many hours in the day."

"He can't be working  _that_  much."

Cully turned around, catching the other woman's gaze. "What is that supposed to mean?" she asked, not caring about the echo this time.

Alana's fair skin was almost glowing in the harsh lights of the corridor and her blue eyes were wide. "People can only work for so long," she said, almost whispering. "That's all I was trying to say."

"I'm sorry," Cully said, crossing her arms. Another of the cast or crew must have left the stage door open up ahead, for a fast, chilly wind was racing through the hall. "I didn't mean to be sharp."

"No worries."

Cully had intended to walk quicker when they reached the flat, safe surface at the end of the stairs, but something kept her feet firmly on the ground. "I've known him for years. If he didn't have to spend so long there, he wouldn't."

Once again, Alana had her hand in a fist, now holding it against her cheek. "Well, how long is he there, if he can't make any time for you?"

"Gavin is there by eight in the morning and often doesn't leave until nine or ten in the evening. Eight is early right now."

"What takes so long? Surely they can't still be out at that time—"

" _Paperwork._ "

Pressing her knuckles still harder against her face, Alana said, "But you said that isn't normal."

"It isn't." Alana raised an eyebrow and Cully swallowed. "Well,  _most_  of the time."

"And I guess now there'd be no time at the weekend either."

Cully sighed. As unpleasant as it was to think about, it was worse to say or hear it out loud. "He really doesn't have weekends at the moment."

"That can't be easy."

"It isn't," Cully said, finally beginning to walk again. Alana continued alongside her. "But I'm used to it."

"How do you get used to something like that?"

The stage door appeared at the end of the hall, half open to the cool, late summer evening. "My dad never had much time while I was growing up. He missed a lot of things he'd rather not have."  _Or Mum and I wished he hadn't missed,_  she thought, biting back a small grin. "But he can't stop thinking about work. When my parents were married, as soon as the clerk was finished, he dashed off with a new thought on a case."

"What?"

"It was the right thought."

"But you must be joking!"

"I'm not. That's just the way he is. But—Gavin isn't like that." No, not at all. Just a week ago, if his phone had been turned off, neither of them would have cared in the least. Whatever was happening outside of his flat—outside of his bed—could have waited.

"Sounds a little like it right now," Alana said quietly.

"Because now there really isn't time. There's too much going on."

"It could always be that way."

"It won't be," Cully said quickly, finally taking her first steps into the proper wind wafting through the alley. "He lets work be when he's not there."

Behind her, Alana tugged a scarf from her bag, knotting it around her neck against the cool air. "Then that's a good change for you, as far as policemen are concerned."

"It is," Cully added, her eyes dropping to the rough alley pavement. "Most of the time."

"It still doesn't sound like it's all right." Stepping forward, Alana twisted the small ring of keys around two of her fingers. "Would you like to go for a cup of tea?" she asked quietly, the jangling of the metal competing with her slight voice. "Get your mind off it?"

Cully already had her mobile out of her back pocket—her jacket pushed back down to her waist as protection against the breeze, the screen open to her list of contacts, and her thumb ready to dial Gavin's phone number again. The thought of a hot cup of tea was tempting, something to warm her after only a minute or so in the cooler air. But then the conversation: sitting at a table across from this woman, watching Alana's blue eyes set in that pale face  _watching her_ , barely touched with concern and instead filled with curiosity. "No, thank you," Cully said, drawing her jacket closer. "I'll be fine. But I'll see you tomorrow."

Alana sighed, shaking her head as she did. "Don't remind me."

Laughing lowly, Cully shrugged her shoulders. "He's right—we all knew it was coming."

"But Saturday?" The other woman shook her head again. "I suppose that will just amuse your policeman."

Tapping her thumb on the send button, Cully lifted the phone as she half turned away from Alana. "Probably. Turnabout is fair play."

Just offering a small wave, Alana also turned and headed down the back alley, rounding the corner in a matter of seconds. As she vanished, Cully let out a quiet breath she didn't remember holding. The ringing began, shrill and interminable in her ear. As the fourth ring finished, Cully frowned.  _Another message,_  she thought, searching for something to say. She had no idea at all, had had no idea when she dialed—

"Troy."

His voice startled her as it replaced the phone's ring and she took in a deep breath of relief. "Hi, Gavin?"

"Oh," he said quietly. For a few seconds, there was only muted noise on the other end of the line, broken by quick, precise footsteps and the click of a door handle. "Cully."

"Just stepping out of the office?"

"It's easier than watching him scowl."

Cully laughed again, the sound as hollow as a few minutes earlier.  _He'll have to learn eventually._  "Will you be able to give me a lift tonight?" she asked, pressing the phone closer to her ear.

Now there was complete silence greeting her, not even the sound of footsteps or a file cabinet opening or closing. "I don't think so, Cully," he said after a moment, the words heavy and unhappy. "We're still not quite done here."

 _Of course,_  she thought, pulling her jacket even closer as the wind suddenly rushed down the alley with a gentle wail. "How much longer do you think you'll be?"

"Might be an hour."

 _An hour?_  she thought. She could easily be home in twenty minutes, at least if the bus ran on schedule. But after so many days without seeing him and hardly talking to him, his absence was like an ache. Even a few minutes to sit and speak with him face to face had to provide some relief. "Then why don't you meet me for a cup of tea after that?" she asked, the sentence done before she realized she had spoken at all. But really, it  _was_  an early end to his day.

"Get my mind off it, you mean?" Gavin had hardly finished when a real laugh burst from her mouth. "Is that funny?"

"It is, actually," Cully said, nodding to herself.

"Why?"

"It's nothing important. But yes, if you want to put it that way."

"Can't I ask why?"

Cully shivered, drawing her free arm tighter across her chest. "Just something someone said a little while ago." Not even knowing why as she did it, Cully glanced over her shoulder. A few of the cast and crew were in the alley, talking, smoking, and paying no attention to anyone outside of their own small worlds. "Where do you want to meet?"

"Same place?"

 _Where else?_  Cully thought. Even if she had agreed to Alana's invitation, she would have refused to go there, not with the actress as a companion. "Of course."

Though it was faint, she heard Gavin's own quick breath. "I'll see you as soon as I can."

* * *

_"It isn't fair."_

_"Look, Cully—"_

_"Not to me— Not to either of us."_

_"Do you think I like it?"_

_"No—"_

_"Not seeing you, barely talking to you?"_

_"No, Gavin, I don't."_

_"You know there's nothing I can do, don't you?"_

"Yes _, Gavin. But I don't have to like it."_

_"Neither do I."_

_"You can call when you're done with work, even if it's late."_

_"That would be really late."_

_"What do you think my days will look like for the next few weeks?"_

_"Late."_

_"As late as yours."_

_"But—really, Cully—they won't start as early."_

_"Early enough."_

_"So now I'll be the one who never gets an answer?"_

_"It will just feel like a few minutes, if you're so busy with your case."_

_"Probably longer."_

_"What do you mean?"_

_"The chief superintendent is thinking of dismantling the task force."_

_"What?"_

_"We've hardly made any progress and he can't keep us all on it forever."_

_"After all that work, he's just going to give up?"_

_"It's a bloody waste, putting all that time into it for nothing."_

_"So you'll be waiting for my calls instead?"_

_"At a guess."_

_"That might be fair."_

_"Didn't you just say it wasn't?"_

_"But turnabout is fair play, Gavin, you know that."_

_"Sometimes."_

Cully almost made herself another cup of tea when she arrived home, despite the late hour. Both their cups of tea had sat in front of them in the shop, only half drunk before each was stone cold. Instead, she chose a glass of water; her hand did not shake this time, even as she set it on the counter more forcefully than she intended.

"God," she said quietly, pushing it away. Gavin could be so frustrating at times, though she knew that he never meant to be, even if she had only hoped on a few occasions. If anything, Cully wished more than ever that she had not allowed the conversation with Alana to continue. The words had weighed heavily on her mind, fading yet never disappearing as she sat with Gavin.

But when they finally said their goodbyes after he drove her home—as they embraced in the cool air and she kissed him rather quicker than she had in the past—his touch still brought a chill to her skin. Whether he realized it or not, his hand had again drifted to her waist and hip, and even through the fabric of her jacket, the pressure drew goosebumps. Lying in bed almost an hour later, the mere memory tightened her muscles.

The man truly was driving her mad—and she was doing nothing to stop it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So...long time no update, huh. Apologies. There was an incredible attack of stuff in the dreaded Real World. Work went crazy (yes yes yes, I love you, too, sixty to seventy hour work weeks), to the point that when I was home I did little more than sleep and make coffee. Had some upheavals in relationships, one instance very good and one instance very frightening. Made an unexpected trip back to visit family. Currently getting stressed out by government paperwork. And work is about to go crazy again. (A nice restaurant could go crazy in December? Whodathunkit?) So I really can't say how consistent updates will be. Rest assured, though, the story will be finished. I have too much of the end written to let it languish forever and I don't believe in not finishing stories. Plus, even I want to see what twists and turns our occasionally troubled proto-couple will take.


	30. Chapter 29: Assured Clear Distance

**Chapter 29: Assured Clear Distance**

The day's first mug of station coffee was cooling beside Barnaby's hand when the police constable offered him the manila folders. Reaching for it, Barnaby grimaced as a crack rang from his lower back. He had not slept well the past few nights, but had instead tossed and turned until the early morning. The prior night had been a particularly bad one. "These them?"

"Yes, sir," the young man said with a nod, "the originals are on top. Copies of each are in the next folder."

"Thank you."

"You're welcome, sir." With another nod, the young constable turned and walked back across the squad room, weaving in and out of the flow of uniformed bodies. With the worst of the traffic traversed, he veered away from the exit, dallying for a moment at Sergeant Brierley's desk. She didn't even look up from her work, and so the man continued on, though at a slower pace.

_Silly bastard,_  Barnaby thought, his back complaining another time as he settled into his chair once more.  _You think they'd all be done with trying by this point._

In the top folder lay several pieces of paper encased in plastic sleeves, already dusted in vain for fingerprints. "Seems useless to try in any case," he muttered, setting them beside one another on his desk. The letters were haphazard, cut roughly from newspapers and magazines and pasted onto plain paper available in any shop catering to the public.

_No better tHan an AniMAL_

_iF Neil diEs BEfore ThE ROOf iS fiXED youll FOLLoW HIM CloSE behiND_

Barnaby attempted another sip of coffee, but shuddered. It was hardly lukewarm and now tasted even worse than when he had first taken it from the pot smoldering on the burner, if such a feat was possible. Pushing the top folder aside, he opened the second, containing copies of the threatening notes, the complaint, and related documents. Hardly anything was written on the initial form: a name and pertinent information, an address, a phone number, and a brief description of the situation. "'Threatening notes appeared after death of complainant's tenant. No other information given.'" Beneath that page was a copy of a death certificate for an elderly man, Neil Axtell, with pneumonia listed as the cause. Under _that_  were a few complaints regarding the property the man rented, citing roof problems and a general lack of upkeep. Those had been made by a close friend of the now deceased tenant, and nothing had been done about them.

Barnaby tried one final mouthful of coffee, but finally concluded it was good for nothing but clogging a drain. "Well, that's enough to be going on with," he muttered with a shake of his head, bracing himself to stand. He ignored the popping in his spine as he rose from his chair—he only hoped it was the end of it for the day, though he knew it was not—and spun around quickly to lift his jacket from the chair's back. His fingers almost caught in the elbow of one sleeve as he yawned.

"You can let that alone for the moment," Barnaby said as he rounded his desk, still forcing his hands through the ends of his sleeves.

At his own desk, Troy glanced up from the pile of papers that Barnaby had watched grow as the morning progressed. "Sir?"

"Believe it or not, Troy."

His sergeant shook his head, dropping his pen on the page he was filling in at the moment. "A bit of a stretch for it to be true."

"That tired of it?"

Troy shoved the pen away with his hand; it clattered against the neat pile of other pens, scattering them across the front of his work area. "Wouldn't you be, sir, if you'd spent the last few bloody weeks filling in forms about break-ins and had it go nowhere?"

Barnaby bit back a smile.  _Brought it on yourself, Troy,_  he thought. "Then believe me when I say you're done with it for a spell."

"I'm willing to believe you, sir."

"Good," Barnaby said, shaking his right arm a final time, "because we're due in Malham as soon as possible." Even though he paused to pick up the folder of photocopies and other documents, he was through the door, down the corridor, out of the building, and standing beside the car before Troy caught up with him.

"Why the hurry?" Troy asked, fumbling in his pocket for his keys and squinting in the bright morning sun.

Barnaby shrugged, and found his shoulders still stiff. "Why not hurry? It's a good habit."

As soon as Troy found his key ring in his pocket, the locks opened with a gentle click as he pressed the button on the remote opener. "Back to my education, sir?"

Opening his door and sitting heavily, Barnaby took in a deep breath when his back cracked another time. "Never stop trying to learn, Troy, whether you're educating yourself or learning from someone else."

"Right," Troy muttered, sitting and fastening his own seat belt, his hand quickly moving to the key already positioned in the ignition. Turning it over, he asked, "So what's in Malham, sir?"

"There  _was_  an ill tenant."

"Was?"

Barnaby tightened his hand on the door as the tires squealed on the turn onto the main road. "And there  _is_  a disliked landlord."

Lifting his face to look in the rear-view mirror then turning to glance out the window to his right, Troy scowled. "Is there any other kind?"

"You do find them occasionally."

"I'll try to remember that."

" _Occasionally_ ," Barnaby said loudly, the knuckles of his left hand growing white as the car swerved to the left to avoid a cyclist. "Thank you for your caution, Troy."

His sergeant yanked the steering wheel hard to the right, both returning to the proper side of the road once clear of the cyclist and turning sharply onto a street Barnaby supposed Troy had only just noticed. "So," Troy said, straightening the car, "how disliked is he?"

Barnaby was about to speak when a quick memory of the complaint shot through his mind. Opening the folder on his lap, he tugged out the complaint itself. In the short description of the situation was a name: _Melissa Townsend_. "She, Troy," he said, opening the glove compartment. A few days earlier after an endless day of drives and interviews, he had tucked a bag of boiled sweets into the small area.  _She'll never know,_  Barnaby thought, though he still heard a  _tsk_  of disapproval as if Joyce sat in the back seat.

"Fine—how disliked is  _she_?" Troy asked, his eyes focused on the road for once.

"Enough that someone's threatened her."

"And that's enough to drag us all the way out to Malham, a threat against a landlord?" Sighing loudly, Troy drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. "Or land _lady_?"

"Troy, that is what we do."

"I thought we were supposed to investigate actual crimes, sir."

Closing the folder, Barnaby set the paper bag on top. "It would be nice to prevent one for a change."

As the man glanced away from the road—Barnaby's heart throbbed with panic for a moment—Troy said, "It's just that it won't be the first time someone's threatened a landlord. Or the last."

"They normally don't put it in writing." With his sergeant's gaze on the road again, Barnaby's heart began to slow. Ignoring the crinkling of the paper bag and then the plastic wrapper, he popped a purple sweet into his mouth. The blackcurrant flavor was harsh, artificial, and delicious.

"It's been tempting," Troy said, shaking his head.

Pulling the various complaints and the death certificate from the folder, Barnaby said, "We've all been there. The owner is...Melissa Townsend. The property was sold to her by her father three years ago." He reached into the bag of sweets another time, retrieving a red, strawberry-flavored piece. "Tenant was Neil Axtell, an elderly man who recently died of pneumonia."

"Sending threatening notes because of that's a little much, don't you think, sir?"

"Not if you blame her for his death," Barnaby muttered, running his eyes over the reports about the house's condition.

"Even then..."

Barnaby said nothing else, instead rereading the complaints regarding the house.  _Drafty windows, leaky roof, landlord informed of needed maintenance several times._  He did not realize his hand had drifted to the sweet bag another time and he held an unwrapped green candy before he had a chance to look at it. Barnaby could not abide the green ones and held it out to his sergeant. "Troy."

Troy looked away from the road briefly. "Could I have a red one please, sir?"

Barnaby held back a growl of irritation.  _Almost forgetting himself,_  he thought. "I've unwrapped this one, eh," he said, focusing his eyes on the papers before him.

Sighing quietly, Troy took the sweet without further complaint. "So, how old's this Melissa Townsend, then?"

Barnaby looked to his paperwork once more. "Twenty-two."

Troy glanced to him with wide, disbelieving eyes. "A bit young, isn't it?" he asked, the words slightly muddled as he spoke around the sweet.

"Her father wanted her to get used to the responsibilities of property ownership early on." Lifting the photocopies of the letters, Barnaby read over the supplementary information another time. "Seems she didn't do much in the way of maintenance."

"She passed the first landlord's exam, then." Barnaby couldn't help but smile and caught his sergeant's eye as they shared a laugh, what felt like the first in weeks—

"Troy!"

Two sets of tires squealed on the pavement as Troy yanked the wheel hard again, almost veering off the road before the car screeched and came to a heart-pounding halt. Even though there was no impact with the foliage along the road's edge, Barnaby gritted his teeth against another throb of his shoulder.

The other driver was already out of his vehicle, a sleek sports car laden with curves designed to hug the twists and turns of both rural roads and crowded motorways. "What the hell do you think you're doing?" he shouted, slamming his door closed and proceeding to the center of the road with long, angry strides. Barnaby refused to look at Troy, instead opening his door and setting the folder and bag on his seat as Troy exited the vehicle as well. Slamming his own door was a difficult temptation to resist.

"You might not mind writing off that heap of junk," the man continued, his arms swinging, "but mine's just out of the showroom!"

At last in the middle of the road a few feet from the other driver, Barnaby fished his warrant card from his jacket pocket. "I'm Detective Chief Inspector Barnaby," he said, opening it to his identification. With a nod to his sergeant as he displayed the same card, he added, "This is Detective Sergeant Troy."

The man before them was clad in a well tailored suit coat, wearing a cravat at his neck and his hair combed flat against his head as he glared down his broad nose. "I thought you chaps were supposed to know how to drive."

Returning his warrant card to his pocket, Barnaby asked, "And your name is..."

The man yanked his wallet from his own pocket, showing little caution for a dark blue jacket that must have cost several hundred pounds. "Frederick Bentine-Brown," he said, handing over the small card. "I would like to know where to write my letter of complaint."

Barnaby ran his eyes over the information on the license; the address listed was in Midsomer Worthy, and certainly a large piece of property given the man's well known wealth and connections. "You have every right to do so, of course. And we have grounds—thank you," Barnaby said, handing the driving license back, "for charging you with reckless driving." The man's eyes narrowed, and Barnaby thought he saw that proud face wrinkle as well. "But we're a bit  _busy_  at the moment, sir, so why don't you just climb back into your motor car and continue with a little more care?"

Not bothering to answer, Bentine-Brown shoved his wallet away as he turned, heading to his sports car with the same long paces he had taken before.

Standing beside him, Barnaby heard a quiet hiss of anger from Troy. "And let us get on with our investigations," his sergeant called.

"Wouldn't want to keep you from your crime busting," Bentine-Brown said, still strolling back to his car. As he opened the door, he turned back; even so far away, Barnaby could see the hint of an arrogant smile. "Somebody's stolen a lawnmower, have they?"

The man folded himself into the driver's seat, turned the ignition, and roared around the curve toward Causton, leaving a small spray of dust and the fading hum of the engine as the only evidence of the narrowly avoided collision. "Troy," Barnaby began, still staring at the soil settling on the edge of the road, "if you're going to drive innocent members of the public off the road, try  _not_  to pick on influential multimillionaires, would you?"

Taking a stuttering step toward their own vehicle, Troy threw a disgusted glare back at the road the sports car had disappeared down. "Git."

"A justifiably irritated one."

As they climbed into the car again—Barnaby fastened the buckle of his seat belt quickly and very firmly before placing the bag and folder on his lap again—Troy scowled. "Could hardly tell what he meant to do when he came round the bend."

"Say what you will, but for the moment, I'll blame it on the lack of a center line."

With his seat belt in place as well, Troy shoved the key into the ignition and turned it over again with a heavy hand. "And not the other driver?"

Barnaby shook his head. "Not after this many years."

"Sorry, sir," Troy muttered as the car shuddered forward for the first few feet.

"I only have to survive until Thursday," Barnaby said, rolling his shoulder to relieve the gentle throbbing but just shifting it to the top of his back instead. "So, if you could please avoid killing us until after then..."

Troy's gaze moved away from the road. "What about Thursday—"

"It's the opening night of  _Pygmalion_  at the Playhouse." A gentle warmth swelled in Barnaby's chest even as the car reached a sudden halt at a stop sign, pushing the ache in his shoulder and back from his mind.  _About time I remembered something,_  he thought. "You coming?"

"Of course, sir. I promised Cully I would."

"I thought you would be," Barnaby said, the words lower than he intended.  _No surprise there._

"Well, as many times as I've read that play..."

_And spent all those afternoons and evenings with her,_  Barnaby thought.  _Just like before._  But it  _wasn't_  just like before, he knew. Troy had, after all, passed much of that time with her clutching an increasingly bedraggled and annotated copy of  _Pygmalion_. In the past, there had been no reason except for a desire on both his sergeant and his daughter's parts. Now it was a garbled mess of mere desire, request, obligation, and probably enough other reasons to set his head spinning if he was ever party to them.

"It's been a while since her mother and I didn't have to read her lines with her," Barnaby said, turning his gaze out the window.

"Sir?"

The edge of the road sped along, bushes and trees and shrubs blurring together into a mass of green. This could not become what it had before, a shouting match with his sergeant. That moment had complicated their working relationship, and god only knew what his daughter had thought—but not said. "For a long time, she just read them with Nico, but not for a while, now."

"I just—"

"Not that we never offered, this time around," Barnaby added. "She said she had all the help she needed."

Troy nodded as his fingers began to tap the steering wheel again. "I tried my best—"

Barnaby gritted his teeth as the ache seared his muscles anew. "Never asked for one read-through with either of us."

"Sir," Troy said as the car swerved briefly again, "she mentioned once asking your wife—"

"So"—Barnaby smacked his knuckles against the window as he cut Troy off—"I suppose you did almost as good a job as Nico." Though he was waiting for an answer, the only thing Barnaby received from Troy was silence, broken by the rustling of the car's tires on the pavement.

After a moment, Troy managed, "Well, she asked if I would read—"

"Yes, I know she did, Troy," Barnaby said flatly, narrowing his eyes as he focused on the meeting of green foliage and grey road. "That is not the point." The papers and the bag on his lap crinkled as he shifted toward the car door. "You do remember what I said before, don't you?"

Troy's fingers ran even more quickly along wheel. "What, sir?"

"Something about daughters, and sergeants, and their appropriate places in the world."

"I don't think I'll forget—"

"So I don't have to repeat it."

"No, sir."

"I'm glad to know that," Barnaby said, his shoulder twinging again.

As Troy touched the indicator, preparing to turn left off the main road, Barnaby heard him say quietly, "And neither do I."

Barnaby's face snapped back toward his sergeant. "You have something to add?"

"Hmm?"

"I thought I heard you say something."

"No, nothing," Troy said, shaking his head vigorously.

"Are you sure, Troy?"

"Quite, sir."

Though the disappointment of the burglary task force had weighed on his mind Friday night, it had not been the thought keeping him from sleep. That day at CID had wrapped up comparatively earlier, allowing both Troy and him the rare joy of leaving at something approaching a decent hour. When he arrived home, Joyce and dinner were waiting for him—a Marks and Sparks quiche paired with a simple green salad, a meal mercifully devoid of his wife's attempts at culinary creativity—but his daughter was not. While late rehearsals were something he and Joyce had both become accustomed to, his daughter had not returned until half ten, long past what he expected. For the next few days, it was to be a different situation, but  _that_  Friday night? The final respite before the hell of technical week? Unanticipated. Her late arrivals Saturday and Sunday evening had only served to keep that unexpectedly long Friday in his mind, and to keep him awake long after he wished to be asleep. "Come now," Barnaby said, "out with it, Troy."

"I've—" Troy stopped and Barnaby heard him suck in another, deeper breath. "I've enjoyed spending the time with her."

_You must learn to lie better_ , Barnaby thought. "Most people do," he said, finally peeling his hand away from the door to pick through the papers in the folder on his lap. "She's _usually_  a pleasant person to be around."

"Usually?"

Barnaby pulled out one of the notes, wondering again what sort of young woman awaited them in Midsomer Malham. A twenty-two year-old woman who had no concern for the condition of the property she owned, living in one of the wealthier Midsomer villages. "Pretty faces can hide sharp tongues," he said quietly. If his experience was anything to go by, they were about to encounter a vile person.

As Troy took another turn without bothering with the indicator, Barnaby heard him sigh. "I don't need you to tell me that, sir."

Barnaby's eyes narrowed, for there was a strange regret in his sergeant's voice, like he was in the midst of reliving a memory.  _Sounds like experience,_  he thought, though the possibility was unsurprising. He had had more than enough moments when his daughter's quick observations and sometimes harsh comments had cut him deeply, most often with no apologies to soften the sting. Despite the mellowing of her temper since she had left secondary school, her words often remained blunt.  _I'd have expected her to be more careful with him._ "That bad, was it?"

Troy's gaze left the road another time. "Didn't you ask—" Mid-sentence, his eyes returned to the now unpaved road and his words stopped.

"Yes, ask  _what_?"

His sergeant shook his head. "Nothing, sir."

"Are you still sure?"

"No, it's nothing."

_Well, that's bloody useless._  Juggling the bag and the folder, Barnaby brought out the complaint again. "'Threatening notes appeared after death of complainant's tenant. No other information given,'" he read again. "Doesn't sound like she's too concerned about it."

"Then why should we be, sir?"

"Because we are  _paid_  to be concerned, even if we don't want to be." Pulling the wrapper from a sweet, Barnaby scowled as he saw it was yellow.  _Even worse than the green ones,_ he thought, holding it out to Troy.

Troy's face was no happier than his own. "Could I trade you for a red one—or a purple—"

" _No_ , Troy."


	31. Chapter 30: A Divided Way

**Chapter 30: A Divided Way**

With the telephone receiver pressed between her ear and shoulder and the cookbook clutched tightly in her hand, Joyce held back a sigh. There was, after all, no use in being irritated. "Are you sure you won't be home in time for dinner?"

"I'm sure, Mum," her daughter said on the other end of the line. "We've still got some work left this evening—and Gavin is going give me a lift once we're done."

_No surprises there,_  Joyce thought. The week in which Cully had found her own way home after rehearsal was long finished, it seemed. Even with the late days that had encompassed Cully's weekend and the first workday of this week, Gavin Troy still made his way to the Causton Playhouse to drive her home. At this point, for anything else to happen would be more than odd; it would be bizarre.

"But it shouldn't be too late," her daughter added.

"I'd hope not, if tomorrow's the premiere."

"Yes," Cully said, though she was silent for a second. "A bit earlier than last night."

Joyce shook her head, and the receiver jiggled against her shoulder. "You're starting to sound just like your father."

"He's said a few times that I sound just like  _you_."

"That's perfectly reasonable, isn't it?"

After a moment filled with rustling and clattering in the background, Cully said, "I suppose." Her voice faded away again, replaced by several unintelligible words, and Joyce pressed her ear harder against the plastic receiver. Regret followed immediately when her daughter spoke. "I'll see you when I get home tonight."

"If you're not too late," Joyce said, setting the book face down on the counter and opening the back to the index. "I do hope the rest of your evening goes well."

"Me too." A few seconds of additional rustling and a bit of shouting cluttered the line before Joyce heard a barely audible "Bye, Mum" and the sudden flat silence indicating the end of their conversation. These sorts of calls from her daughter were now typical and the least favorite Joyce ever received...well, aside from those they had been fortunate to have from family friends—rather than Tom's colleagues!—when Cully was a teenager.

The phone calls she received from her daughter now—inevitably placed from the theater—were often tense and brief, wedged between the end of one scene's rehearsal and the beginning of another's, made almost on borrowed time.  _Like someone else in this household,_  Joyce thought as she returned the wireless receiver to its cradle. Even if she had truly pursued the possibility almost thirty years prior, a career as a teacher would have left her as the eye of the storm in the household's rushing about. Her husband and her daughter's professions were not well-suited to a calm environment.

But with the phone call finished and the proper page of the book once again visible, Joyce took a moment to wash her hands, even as her gaze drifted to the bowl of medlars on the counter beside the cookbook. Though she intended to follow Cherrie Balcombe's recipe word for word, Joyce remained thrilled to have another recipe for guidance. Without it, she might have begun to doubt Cherrie's instructions to let the fruit ripen so far that it nearly fell apart in her hands. Just before Cully's phone call, Joyce had transferred a number of the wrinkled, brownish-orange fruits from the white crate on the table in the adjacent room to a cutting board; she had been unable to purchase fewer. After a quick cut down the center of each to expose the pit, she had moved them to a stainless steel bowl. Now, lifting the first medlar, Joyce popped out the pit, depositing it on the now empty cutting board and placing the fruit on a white tea towel.

It was a simple, repetitive process, drawing that same slice down the middle, peeling the dreadfully ripened fruit apart, and slipping the pit onto the cutting board. Soon, Joyce did not even spare the motions a thought, and her mind turned to other matters...to her daughter. For the past few weeks—even if she had attempted to conceal it—Cully's happiness at Gavin's presence in her life had been more than obvious. It had become impossible to ignore. Her face was brighter, her words lighter, and sometimes her concentration on revision in the back garden had clearly wavered.  _I don't even need Tom to see that,_  Joyce thought, rubbing her fingers together as the sticky pulp from the fruit clung to the tips. No deductions were necessary.

Again and again: open and pit, open and pit, open and pit, until the rhythm took on a life of its own, sinking out of her consciousness...And if it happened again, then what of Tom and Gavin? Joyce couldn't help but wonder, and could anyone blame her? Twice before, her husband's relationship with his sergeant had been strained over Cully...but could even a good working relationship survive that a third time? Could anyone  _blame_  Tom if he threw in the towel, finally decided he'd had enough of Gavin Troy—

"Hello, Joycey?"

Even though Tom's voice was distant, Joyce turned toward it. "In the kitchen," she called, almost looking over her shoulder before thinking better of it as she popped another pit onto the cutting board. His footsteps came closer and after a moment, Joyce heard the gentle thump of paper hitting the kitchen table. "How did it go today?"

"Oh..."  _Not well, then,_  she thought as his footsteps drew even nearer and his breathing told her he stood right behind her. "We're not actually going to eat those..."

"Medlar jelly." Joyce held one of the fruits up, the soft medlar almost squishing between her fingers. "It's Cherrie's recipe. You have to let the fruit go rotten before you eat it." Bringing it to just in front of her nose, Joyce sniffed it. As delicious as Cherrie Balcombe's medlar jelly was, the scent of the ripened fruit was enough to turn her stomach.

Reaching into the bowl, Tom lifted one of the scored medlars. "You've got to be kidding."

"It's in the book." Joyce nodded at the open volume on the counter. "I checked."

Setting the fruit back onto the pile, Tom—his reading glasses nowhere to be seen—reached for the book, bringing it close to his face as he walked around the end of the counter. _Away from the smell,_  Joyce thought as she removed another pit. "Medlar jelly," he said, his voice already taking on the distant tone it did when he was lost in thought. "Medlar..."

Joyce glanced up from her hands. "What is it?"

"Someone described their friend as 'the meddler'," he continued, lowering the book slightly. "I wonder if she meant one who meddles...or the fruit?"

"There are quite a few trees over Malham way, in the bigger gardens. Quite popular locally."

The book came up again. "'Medlars spread on straw ripen"—his voice stopped for a moment—"by their own corruption.'"

_An old way to think about it,_  Joyce thought, cringing as one of the medlars transformed into a paste in her hand. Looking toward her husband another time, she frowned. The book still lay open in his grasp and he had not moved at all.  _I can't imagine what that means to him._

After another few long seconds, he turned back to her. "I guess that's one way to think about it," Tom said, retracing his steps to the kitchen proper and settling the book back where it had been before.

"However you think about it, that's the way it has to be."

"And you're absolutely sure?" he asked, scratching at his neck, just below the edge of his collar.

"All I'm doing is following the book, Tom. And Cherrie's recipe." Just managing to scrape the pulp from the pit, Joyce dropped the medlar onto the now not so white tea towel.

Nodding at the pile, Tom said, "Not sure I trust either of them, if they're claiming this will be  _good_  to eat."

"It's called bletting."

"Oh, there's a whole process to it, is there?"

"Apparently, it's not the only fruit that needs it. Persimmons and quinces are left to start rotting as well."

Her husband's brow furrowed. "Are you planning to serve us more rotten fruit?"

The latest pit hit the cutting board harder than she had intended. "I only looked it up in one of our encyclopedias, Tom. They were all listed there."

"At least we won't be eating them raw." Leaning across the counter just to the towel, he inhaled deeply and briefly before his mouth curled in disgust. "Is Cully back from rehearsal yet?" he asked, already wearing a frown.

"Of course not," Joyce said with a shake of her head. It was about to begin anew. "She rang, though. She said they'll be done earlier than yesterday—"

"Well, that's good to know." The foul grimace faded as Tom stood straight again. "I've hardly seen her lately."

"And that she doesn't know when she'll be back," Joyce said, quicker than before.

The new calm on his face vanished, curiosity and confusion taking its place. "Even if they're nearly finished?"

"She said Gavin will give her a lift, like he usually does."

The next frown was one of resignation. "Of course."

"She won't have much time for anything except the play for the next few weeks."

"All for the best."

Joyce handled the next fruit with even less care. It was as if every word they had shared regarding their daughter and Gavin had been ignored. "I guess if you're going to talk about meddlers..."

"Not that again, Joyce."

Another pit popped onto the board. "And here I thought you were doing so well."

"There  _are_  limits."

Narrowing her eyes, Joyce glanced at her husband, and for a moment, she thought she noticed a flinch. "Hmm."

She heard the buried sigh just before he kissed her cheek, quickly drawing back and away from the smell...she hoped. "I won't say anything else. I know that makes you happy."

"I'm not the one you should worry about keeping happy," Joyce said quietly.

Resting a hand on her shoulder, Tom chuckled; it was a choked, forced sound. "You're the only one who's ever around to tell."

* * *

Before leaving Joyce to her preserves—and sending off a few prayers that she would meet with more culinary success than usual—Barnaby made himself a cup of tea. The heat of the tea bled through the ceramic handle to his fingers and by the time he settled himself into the chair at the desk in his study, Barnaby was more than happy to place it on the wooden surface. But even as the steaming tea languished in the cup, Barnaby left it on the desktop, just warming his fingers on the ceramic. Tea was usually his respite, a quiet moment outside of the hustle and bustle of the day. But now, his stomach was tightening as the irritation grew.

It was a question that had circulated in his mind for weeks: how in the  _hell_  did his wife remain so unconcerned? She knew their daughter as well as he did and, despite the close relationship he shared with Cully—she had always been her father's child—Joyce and Cully had their own unique relationship built on being mother and daughter.  _The women against the man,_  he thought, his mouth twisting into a frown and his fingers beginning to drum on the side of the still warm ceramic cup.

Really, though, how could Cully—or Troy—or Joyce—expect him to react any other way? He had worked with Troy day after day, year after year, and given him directive after directive that was often ignored. And then his daughter, who, despite her early rejection of his authority, had come to at least listen to his suggestions as she matured, seemed to cast aside every word he spoke. But Troy... _God._  Now the man was ignoring each and every comment, every hint—

Yet if his worst fear  _was_  manifesting itself, then it made perfect sense. Would another's words or worries matter at all?  _No,_  don't  _think about it._  That would only make it worse, sicken him even more...if that was possible.

God, he needed a distraction, something,  _anything_  to take it from his mind. Standing with another complaint from his joints, Barnaby turned his back on his desk and his tea, as well as the folder of photos and reports he struggled to no longer examine. Going over all that work yet another time was enough to frustrate him to rage.

"How's it going?" he called as he crossed the floor of his study, returning to the kitchen.

"Fairly well, I think," his wife said, her head bowed over the stove.

"Just think?"

"Tom, I'm new at this," she said, her wrist circling over a wide pot, her fingers gripping a wooden spoon as though she was terrified of it being swallowed by the substance that reached halfway up its length. And  _substance_  was the proper term for the contents: a brown, almost gelatinous semi-solid half-filled the vessel, a wide track remaining each time Joyce moved the spoon.

"It won't look like this at the end, will it?" Barnaby asked, wondering briefly how wretched it must taste.

"The medlars were brown to start," Joyce said, turning her face toward him. "You can't expect them to suddenly turn orange again like they were on the tree."

"Might look like something we could eat," Barnaby muttered.

"Tom!"

"It would certainly help."

"Then you wouldn't be  _able_  to eat it. According to the book, medlars are too bitter to eat when they look the nicest."

"A trade-off, is it?"

"Yes," Joyce said, turning to the pot of jelly again.

"I hope it's worth it," Barnaby said quietly, turning around again to head back into his study and leaving his wife and the kitchen behind. With each step he took into the room, he heard one word pounding in his skull.  _Medlar. Meddler. Medlar. Meddler._

"Bloody thing," he whispered, taking his seat once more. Even the tea and its familiar milky bitterness refused to push the echo from his brain.

On the bookshelf to the left of his desk—just to the left of the now slightly brown and definitely worse for the wear cactus—a dictionary sat on the shelf, between a thesaurus and a plant encyclopedia. Unable to hold his hand back, Barnaby reached over the still prickly succulent for the thick volume. Without even a conscious thought, his fingers flicked through the thin, slick pages, through  _D_ ,  _G_ ,  _L_ , finally moving too quickly and ending in  _O_. Backtracking, he found the first blasted word.

_medlar, noun. 1. A tree of the genus_ Mespilus _. 2. The fruit of the tree. The fruit is something like a small apple, and it is not eaten until it has begun to decay, or more properly, to blet._

_"Ripen by their own corruption",_  Barnaby thought, now moving backwards again.  _Might explain that phrasing._

_meddler, noun. 1. One who meddles or interferes in something not of their concern._

_meddle, verb. 1. To interfere in or with; to concern oneself with unduly. 2. (obsolete) To interest or engage oneself; to have to do (with), in a good sense._

His fingers moved back through yet more pages.

_interfere, verb. 1. To get involved or involve oneself, causing disturbance._

"Quite the name to give a fruit," Barnaby said, trying another sip of now lukewarm tea. As always, that left it vile rather than comforting, the handle of the delicate ceramic cup trembling between his fingertips. Slamming the dictionary closed with his other hand, Barnaby's eyes returned to the empty spot on the bookshelf, running over the cactus another time. To just glance at it was to think of Troy—

Without even considering it, Barnaby reached out his right hand, turning it and the mug over the pot and the cactus with its brown-tinged pads. The milky tea left a faint coat that ran between the needles as it descended to the parched soil. The bloody thing already looked pathetic, wilting in spite of the proper maintenance and measured, proper application of water.  _Probably from before,_  Barnaby thought, just noting a hint of regret. It was, after all, just a plant. But from...bloody thing! It was just a kind gesture, a token of good will sadly attached to  _that_  man and offered long before this new mess. It was unfair to the plant, if he was honest, and almost enough to make him feel guilty.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The dictionary definitions are from Wiktionary, accessed 3 January, 2014. Regional uses of the words were omitted. As a person with some knowledge of gardening, Barnaby very well might not use the term succulent to refer to the cactus. Botanically, however, cacti belong to the family (or so my research says) and it's nice to not be repetitious.


	32. Chapter 31: Heading Somewhere, Someday

**Chapter 31: Heading Somewhere, Someday**

As he pressed the indicator for a left turn, Troy squinted at the glare of headlights in the rear-view mirror. Sitting beside him as she did most evenings, Cully was perched far forward in her seat; even with his eyes trained on the darkened road ahead, he could see her peering at him. "Really, I don't—"

"Oh, come on, Gavin. Don't you want to?"

Troy shook his head, the car almost swerving as his arms moved as well. "I didn't say that—"

Her fingers grazed his elbow and, as ever, Troy found himself aware of nothing else but her touch. "Then why are you saying no?"

"Not because I  _want_  to—"

"Then say yes."

A sigh of frustration fought its way through Troy's throat, finally hissing between his lips. "Cully—"

Now her fingers were tightening around that same joint. "There's nothing stopping you—"

"I know—"

"—except  _you_."

"Look, opening night's the next day," he said, pulling his arm closer to his own body, "why—"

"Think of it as an opportunity to see things from the ground up."

Safely on a side street, Troy spared her a glance. "Come again?"

"Well," Cully said, drawing her hand back and fiddling with the end of her sleeve, "it never goes smoothly."

"At this point?"

"Things will be start and stop—"

Staring out into the night before them, Troy muttered, "Your director will be an ass—"

Cully cleared her throat. "And we might have to backtrack sometimes."

"He'll  _really_  be an ass—"

"Gavin, please," Cully said loudly. Troy expected her to go on immediately, but she did not speak for a moment, looking out her window instead. When it came to telling anyone with the last name  _Barnaby_  "No", he was uncertain whether it was more difficult to address the chief inspector or the man's daughter. And,  _really_ , it wasn't unreasonable to decline her invitation, given all that had happened during the day. Rather than preventing a murder, he and Barnaby had found themselves with the victim they had expected and desperately hoped to protect, her life ended with a needle to the liver. It had been a mess the entire day and would be again tomorrow.

"Some theaters actually sell tickets for final dress rehearsals."

For a brief moment, Troy squeezed his eyes closed. Even after this many years, pushing the thoughts of work aside—the memories of murderers and victims and evidence and endless paperwork—sometimes remained a difficult task. "So people can see an unfinished production?" he managed, training his bleary eyes back on the road.

"Always at a discount."

He tapped his foot on the brake pedal and the car slowed as it neared the next red light. "For the people who are all right with seeing that sort of thing."

Cully laughed, the lighthearted sound pushing away the worries that had already begun to overwhelm him. If he  _did_  crumble— _did_  give in to her request—then what of the next day at CID? He was already dead on his feet without spending another evening out until god only knew when—

"When did you turn into such a critic?"

_Critic?_  Troy thought. Hardly, though perhaps he hadn't said it well. "Just doesn't make sense if I'll be there the next night for the first real show."

"It'll be fun."

"Cully—"

As she leaned towards him, touching her lips to his cheek, Troy's words stopped. "I promise, Gavin."

_Damn._

* * *

Half-six the following evening, after another day of following one lead after another—the final of which saw them attempting to chase after Adam Keyne at his wife's bafflingly anxious behest—he found himself back at the Causton Playhouse on the old, worn stage. Professional this cast might be, but Troy swiftly noted he was the only one in anything but a pair of jeans, a t-shirt, or a jumper. Most looked like they had just come from a walk down at the park, and many were in black from head to toe, trainers included. Though he smiled as he shook hands with members of the cast and crew, it was a struggle to ignore the confusion and awkwardness that came with it. Once, Troy's skin burned as a young woman with frightfully pale skin said, "So  _you're_  the policeman." And then she smiled, like he was a good friend.

The few familiar faces came and went, quickly forgotten as others took their places. Cully, who knew everyone well, smiled at all of them, occasionally taking a moment to pull someone aside and ask about this or that. Though the upcoming rehearsal was the clear topic, the sentences were as much a mystery to him as the faces.

Ten minutes went by, perhaps even fifteen, and still brand new faces were passing in front of him. After the first dozen or so people, Troy stopped trying to remember any of them. Instead, he mumbled an unenthusiastic "Hello" or "Nice to meet you", all the while wishing he had been more forceful in declining Cully's invitation.  _Be seeing all this tomorrow,_ he thought,  _and I wouldn't have to bother with names!_  His face must have gone slack with the confusion, Troy decided. A few of the crew were still offering "Hi" or "Cheers" before nattering on about marks and cues once again; it was then that Cully shoved her elbow into his ribs, hissing, "Gavin!" After that, he forced a broader smile onto his face.

"Get it together, please!" A high pitched male voice cut through the sea of voices, and most of the men and women surrounding Troy fell silent. The faces no longer smiled genuinely—they suddenly bore the same sincerity as his—and the remaining words he heard were strained. "We don't have all day!"

That voice—commanding and cutting—approached swiftly, the cast and crew spreading apart. They widened into a circle of sorts, though it was rather squashed at either end, and one man stepped into the center. Troy was above average height and used to looking down at more than a few of the men he encountered day to day, but he rarely encountered a man quite as short as the one before him. Perhaps five feet and five inches tall, the man's greying red hair just reached Troy's chin.

_The red hair's bad enough_ , Troy thought, gulping down a thick growl of disgust. The man wore an immaculately pressed and manicured jumper, the vertical stripes running up and down perfectly. Add the scarf carelessly tossed around his neck, and... _Gay._

The man was still muttering something as he turned, catching the eyes of all the cast and crew, when Troy saw him pause. The short man almost glared at him even though Troy was at the back of the group. "Oh, hello," the man said, his voice as high as before.

Beside him, Cully shuffled away for a brief moment, her face falling. "Um—"

"And you are?" the man asked, taking a step toward Troy as the men and women enlarged their circle.

Troy almost shivered: the man's eyes were piercing and disconcerting, and he never quite blinked.  _Who'd want to bother with this bloke every day?_  he thought.  _People as nutty as he is, at a guess._

"Well?" the man continued, his gaze now drifting to Cully, the only person who had not given Troy a wide berth.

Touching her hand to his elbow, Cully pushed Troy's arm forward a bit. "This is—one of my close friends, Gavin Troy. Gavin, Paul Pearson, our director."

There was no escaping it. Troy extended his hand, offering it to the director in as friendly a manner as possible and hoping his fingers did not tremble in disgust. "Good to meet you," he said quietly.

Though Pearson glanced down toward Troy's hand, he did not return the gesture. "Cully," he said, his voice nearly vibrating as he shook his head quickly, "I'm sorry, we're already pressed for time—"

Cully's fingers now tightened on Troy's elbow. "I just thought since he's heard so much—"

Pearson raised one of his hands, shaking it vigorously in the air. "And this is quite unexpected."

Hiding his mouth behind his hand, Troy cleared his throat, almost backing up a pace or two as he did, drawing his arm from Cully's grasp. "Cully did say—"

"She said  _what_?" Pearson asked, letting loose a loud, deep sigh as he pressed his palms to his eyes, shaking his head again.  _Definitely gay._

"He's—" Her voice trailed away, but then Cully began again. "He's done a lot to help me—so I thought he might like to see what happens at a rehearsal, not just a performance."

Pearson shook his head yet again, waving his hand once more before slipping it into a back pocket and pulling out his mobile. "We're really not ready for any sort of an audience."

"Even with the opening night tomorrow?" Troy asked.

"Of course."

Cully turned to him, whispering. "No play is ever quite ready."

Walking back into the circle itself—the men and women scattered before him again—Pearson made a beeline for the far corner of the stage, grabbing a crew member's shirt sleeve on the way. The words were indecipherable at that distance, but the director's hands were in the air, almost dancing in circles as the gestures began wildly.  _Of course,_ Troy thought, feeling his nose wrinkle.  _Can't expect anything else_.

The director turned around, wearing an unhappy expression as he returned. Troy fought a sudden desire to take a step back to hide behind Cully.

The man strolled forward, swaying side to side. "It's quite unacceptable, really."

Cully shook her head, and Troy heard a quiet sigh. "I don't see—"

"I can go," Troy said, more quickly than he meant to. "I'll be here for tomorrow night."

"No, Gavin—"

"I think that would be best for my—"

Silence fell, and a shiver ran over Troy's skin. His eyes shifted from Pearson's face to Cully's; Pearson's expression was nearly angry, while Cully's was almost disbelieving.

"I don't understand," she began, but then fell silent when Pearson pushed the air aside another time.

"I need them all focused tonight," he said loudly, glaring at Troy, "not distracted by someone in the auditorium."

"He'll just be watching," Cully said, taking a heavy step forward. "How will that be any different than tomorrow night?"

Pearson touched a hand to his temple with an exaggerated shake of his head. " _We are not ready._ "

"Really, I can go"—Troy took another step back, creating another foot of space between the director and himself—"just be back to give you a lift—"

"There isn't time for this, Cully. Really, why..." Pearson glanced to his watch, a heavy gold face sitting on his wrist. His gaze returned, and his face fell slack. "But I suppose you're already here..."

Troy's heart raced and his right foot slid back another pace.  _No. Please, no._

"I'll want you toward the back," Pearson continued, turning around as he spoke. His head rose and fell, like he was surveying the set, ready to diagnose yet more problems—whether they existed or not. "No noise, nothing."

"That won't be a problem," Cully said, quickly clearing her throat.

"I hope so." Not even looking back, he strode forward to another cluster of cast and crew, shouting more orders: "Come along, settle down—we don't have any time to waste—"

A sharp pain spread through Troy's left foot, and he nearly bit his tongue. "Ow!" Looking down, he saw Cully moving her foot away from his; he just managed to hold back the frown as he noticed the slight dusty footprint across his shoe. "What was that for?"

"Really, Gavin?"

"That's what—"

"Don't pretend," she said, crossing her arms. "You  _know_ what that was about."

"I didn't say anything."

"You were  _thinking_  it."

Troy hissed through his teeth. "No one else knew—"

"You really don't think anyone else—"

Troy released a sigh, cutting off Cully's words. "They weren't paying attention!"

"They could have been."

"But they  _weren't—_ "

She slapped his arm lightly. "You don't know that."

Even though the blow had not hurt, Troy rubbed his fingers on his forearm. "Well, they  _weren't_  until you trod on my foot."

"You're not that subtle."

He didn't bother to hide his scowl. "It's a nasty habit—"

"Are you listening to yourself?" Cully asked, turning her eyes up.  _Probably watching to make sure nothing falls and kills us,_  Troy thought, a twinge of fear turning over in his stomach as he followed her gaze. A mess of cables were draped between the dangling lights, the narrow catwalk, and the ceiling hidden in shadows. Really, none of it could be _that_  stable, and what if someone was walking across the scaffolding without caution, and what if the—

"Gavin?" Cully's voice cut through his thoughts, almost startling him. "Gavin? Are you even listening?"

"Blimey, I—" Troy coughed, curling his fingers into a fist for a brief moment; they were beginning to shake as a few drops of sweat broke through the skin on his forehead. "I know what I mean—and so do you, I think."

"Oh, believe me—"

"And it's not going to change, Cully," he added loudly, the sudden surge of fear abating as he brought his eyes down.

"After this long, I know  _that_."

All around them, the pace of motion was increasing as crew members clad in black from head to toe ran about adjusting this and fiddling with that. Cast members were beginning to pull off those jumpers and t-shirts before heading en masse for one corner of the stage.

"I think they're trying to collect all of you," Troy said quietly, nodding toward the flow of people.

"And sometimes," Cully went on, taking a first step in the same direction, "you just need to learn to keep your stupid thoughts to yourself."

"And I did—I didn't say  _anything_."

Cully didn't bother with a response, just sighing and shaking her head for a moment. "Look, I have to go get ready," she said at last, lifting a hand to push back the blond hair that had crept forward beside her cheeks.

Turning round to face the auditorium of empty seats, Troy squinted, trying to pick out the rows against the blinding stage lights that hung from the ceiling of the auditorium. "Just be out there, then?" he asked, waving one arm toward the back.

"I'd suggest the darkest place you can find." Though Cully did not turn around, she glanced over her shoulder toward Pearson; he was still chatting loudly with a young man clad all in black. "And toward the back. Give him less of a chance to remember you're there."

"Wouldn't upset me if he forgot."

"Well," Cully said, tugging at the bottom of one of her jumper sleeves, "he'll probably be toward the center of the theater. 'Best view,' he always says."

Though he tried to hold it back, Troy felt his hand shift to the top of his tie, loosening the knot there, still precise and tight despite the hours that had passed since he had twisted the silk together. "Whatever you say." He didn't even realize he was leaning forward, pressing his lips to her cheek. But when he stood straight, Troy felt the burn spread over his face anew.

"What's the matter?"

Just at the edge of his vision, Troy saw Cully stretching a hand toward his forearm. As suddenly as she had moved, he drew his arm away, pressing it to his side as his chin dropped. "Nothing."

She shook her head, her blond hair almost fading into her skin. "Gavin, haven't we talked about this before?"

"About what?"

"You're a terrible liar."

"Can we let it alone?" Troy asked, the corner of his mouth twitching toward another frown.

"Sure. Talk about—"

"Come on,  _come on_ , people!" Troy cringed at the director's words, high pitched and shrill. "Costumes, makeup, positions.  _As. Quickly. As. Possible._ "

"Talk about it after?" Cully finished as she took a more few steps away from him.

"Of course," he said quietly, beginning to make for the edge of the stage and the short flight of stairs into the auditorium. His eyes narrowing, Troy glared at the director.  _Nasty bloke._

"Good." Then, without another word, she turned, almost running after the last few men and women filing to the dark regions at the edge of the stage.

Not waiting for the director's angry look, Troy descended the stairs into the empty theater as soon as Cully vanished. Really, it was pointless to hesitate, for she did not look back. Instead, she weaved around the props and wooden steps, her eyes trained on the wooden stage to avoid smashing a leg or hip. But as soon as Troy reached the carpeted floor of the theater, he found himself with no such luck, immediately groaning as one of his knees smacked into an armrest.

After a minute or so of stumbling, Troy collapsed into one of the upholstered seats a little more than halfway toward the back doors, at the very end of the row. As soon as he sat, he let out a long breath. Even being off his feet for a moment brought out the aches in his legs; they burned after a long day of standing, walking, and talking. He settled back into the seat, releasing another sigh as his eyelids drooped—

"Yes, yes, yes," a vaguely familiar voice said, the volume increasing with each repetition of that simple word. The heavy breaths turned to a groan of irritation that Troy bit back as he forced his eyes open to see Pearson heading for the center of the auditorium. The man slipped into one of the rows a few feet in front of him, finally seating himself in the middle.

_Too close,_  Troy thought, standing quietly. He took his steps swiftly, cringing as he heard his trouser legs flapping against the seat legs bolted to the slightly worn carpet. Once he reached the aisle, Troy moved more quickly than quietly; in any event, the shifting of wood and dull thudding of feet on the stage covered the shuffling of his shoes. Just a few rows from the back, he decided, that would do the—

The lights in the auditorium dimmed, plunging the entire place into darkness—and Troy silenced a curse as one of his legs connected with an armrest again. As the first lights appeared on the stage, he dropped into another seat, pulling his throbbing left leg onto the opposite knee. A dull swishing sound filled the theater, quiet and monotonous; a number of men and a pair of women suddenly appeared, shifting beneath the stage lights.

"'I'm getting chilled to the bone'," one of the women—the younger one—said. "'What can Freddy be doing all this time? He's been gone twenty minutes.'"

"'Not so long'," said the other, older and more modestly dressed.  _Costumed_ , Troy reminded himself. "'But he ought to have got us a cab by this.'"

"G' luck with that," Troy whispered before clapping a hand over his mouth as he felt a yawn begin to break over his face.  _Any time_.

The words running back and forth between the cast became more familiar as time passed. Cully had insisted he read a few of the exchanges before her first lines to help her with cues, whatever those were. Troy had felt rather silly, like he was talking to himself. But the lines were difficult to hear.  _No mics_ , he thought, now rubbing at his eyes as the stage briefly became blurry—

"'What's a copper's nark?'" a man asked, and Troy sat straight in his seat. The positions of the actors had changed—more than a little—and now he saw Cully fiddling with the basket of flowers Eliza so often worried about.  _What—she wasn't there—_

"'It's a—well, it's a copper's nark, as you might say. What else would you call it? A sort of informer.'"

"'I take my Bible oath'"—Troy lifted his head higher as he heard Cully speak, though he had to strain to hear her—"'I never said a word—'"

"'Oh, shut up, shut up.'" Another voice had replaced hers. "'Do I look like a policeman?'"

Troy could not hold back a brief snort of laughter, shifting his still aching leg farther ahead on his knee. "No—no, you bloody don't."

The voices faded together, the lines he had spoken so often now just vaguely familiar. Still, he lifted his face as he heard her voice again, squinting through heavy eyelids just to see her on the stage. And...she looked so  _different_  than he was accustomed to. Cully often wore just a short-sleeved shirt and jeans, but she was nearly always put together and...hell, dreadfully attractive. More than stunning. Beautiful. Now, she stood in rags with soot on her face.  _Makeup_ , he reminded himself. This woman before him was not  _Cully_ at the moment; she was Eliza— _Liza—_ Doolittle. Eliza was frumpy and dirty; Cully glowed.

"'He ain't a tec','" one of the actors said. "'He's a blooming busybody: that's what he is. I tell you, look at his boots.'"

"'And how are all your people down at Selsey?'"  _Higgins_ , Troy reminded himself.  _God, read it too often._

"'Who told you my people come from Selsey?'"

"No one," Troy murmured, his chin falling against his chest. "As bad as Barnaby..."


	33. Chapter 32: Unanticipated Crossroads

**Chapter 32: Unanticipated Crossroads**

A buzzing rang in Troy's ears as he jolted in his seat, sitting up perfectly straight. His foot slid from his knee, slamming into the seatback in front of him. Biting his tongue, he wrapped his hand around the toe of his shoe, though the side of his foot began to throb gently in spite of the pressure.

"—is that?" someone shouted in a high-pitched voice.

_Who?_  Troy thought; the name came to him after a moment.  _Bloody director._  His eyes had run around the auditorium when he first jerked in response to the sound, but they now went back to the stage. Cully was there, as was a middle-aged man, both peering out into the darkness, until Pearson yelled, "Go on!"

"'By—by the way, I came down for something'," the actor said, his voice wavering. And there was the buzzing once again. "'I forget what it was.'"

"'Your slippers'," Cully answered, not as strong as before.

The man turned away, glancing around his feet on the stage. "'Oh yes, of course. You shied'—" He stopped after yet another buzz, and now Troy shifted forward in his seat, the sound suddenly louder than he had realized before.

"Where the hell is he?" Pearson shouted again. "Where is he with that wretched phone?"

Troy's hand went to his pocket, grabbing the small mobile quickly. "Um..." he whispered, searching for the proper button with his thumb as the ringing continued. But as soon as he found the  _end_  button, he slammed it down, ending the noise. He almost pressed a hand to his throbbing chest before slipping the phone back into his jacket.

Several meters in front of him, someone rose from a chair, more a shadow than a person—and arms were already in the air, waving wildly. Troy slid back in his seat, his spine bending forward to mask his height. "Since we've  _already_  been interrupted," Pearson said as he reached the aisle, "let's discuss that mess..."

Only  _after_  Troy's breathing slowed did he realize it had accelerated at all...like he was afraid of something.  _Like hell I am,_  he thought, clenching his fingers around both armrests until his knuckles were almost white. Pearson had mounted the stairs to the stage and, once in the glow of the stage lights, he began again: yelling yet more shrill words here, dragging actors there...A shudder spread through each of Troy's limbs as Pearson took Cully's arm, dragging her across the stage, shouting all the while.  _Let her alone._

The  _scene_  seemed to go on for a few minutes, though Troy couldn't be certain; his head nodded and when it rose again, the cast had shifted, gathered around that short man in the center of the stage. But it wasn't just the cast. A number of the crew stood there as well, though they seemed more apt to run from the group for a second, fiddling with a prop or wooden set before returning. Another minute or so of murmurs passed, but they all retreated in the end: the cast found those spots where they had stood before and those mad men and women all in black melted away entirely. Pearson clamored down the stairs back into the auditorium, completely invisible before he shouted, "Again!  _'You shied them at me.'_ "

The man left on the stage glanced at the set behind him, then to his feet before looking to Cully. "'Oh yes, of course'," the actor—Higgins—began again, his voice strengthening with each word. "'You shied them at me.'"

He crouched down and retrieved them before heading with heavy footsteps toward the edge of the stage. He had nearly disappeared from view when Cully—Eliza—no,  _Liza_!—spoke again. "'Before you go, sir—'"

The man dropped his slippers as he turned around. "'Eh?'"

"'Do my clothes belong to me or to Colonel Pickering?'"

Higgins retraced his path, approaching her with his head askew, as though confused. "'What the devil use would they be to Pickering?'"

Even from the back of the theater, Troy recognized the anger on Cully's face.  _No,_  Eliza _!_  he reminded himself. But  _Eliza_  and  _Cully_  were impossible to disentangle now. When she was that less composed girl at the play's start, seeing Eliza rather than Cully was simple. In the middle and at the end, as Eliza morphed into this increasingly confident woman, they melded together—

"'—want them for the next girl you pick up to experiment on.'" Troy blinked, his eyes and mind returning to the stage.

"'Is THAT the way you feel towards us?'"

Eliza waved her hand toward Higgins, though she also backed away. "'I don't want to hear anything more about that. All I want to know is whether anything belongs to me.'" Sadness now replaced the anger, or perhaps resignation. "'My own clothes were burnt.'"

"'But what does it matter?'" Higgins asked, tilting his head to one side. "'Why need you start bothering about that in the middle of the night?'"

"'I want to know what I may take away with me.'"

_Back to her normal life,_  Troy thought.  _Life with her dad. Suppose we've all got to do it sometime._  And god, there was the man again, an angry face peering at him from the bright stage. It was only in his mind—Troy knew that—but he still cringed.  _"Why didn't you answer your phone?"_  he heard the chief inspector ask.

_"Well,"_  he began to answer,  _"didn't want to interrupt the performance—"_

_"_ What performance _?"_

_"Cully's final rehear—"_

_"Why the hell are you there? You've only been giving her lifts!"_  The cringe became a shudder. He didn't want to face knowing—

But there was no putting it off, Troy knew. It was poor form to hang up on anyone without answering...especially not knowing if the person on the other end was his boss.  _Could have been..._ Troy still didn't want to think the name, but it was inevitable.  _Could have been Barnaby._  And who knew what he might want. Well, he  _did_  know, but best to be certain rather than dwell on a likely speculation.

Working his way to his feet—and this time, moving with caution down the row—Troy made his way to the foyer. Only the emergency lights shone, but he still squinted painfully as he stepped out of the darker auditorium.  _How can she do it?_ he wondered.  _She must go blind, looking into those lights._  His vision still swimming, Troy had to find his mobile in his pocket by feel alone. But it was large enough to do so without much trouble. More difficult was managing to find or read anything on the keypad.

After a moment, his eyes ceased to ache and, a couple of seconds later, the words on the mobile's buttons cleared. He found his way through the menu swiftly and brought up the call log, expecting one of Barnaby's numbers; he had the chief inspector's office, home, and mobile numbers all saved. None of those waited at the bottom of the list, and he groaned as he read the name.

_Mum_

_God, I don't need this,_  Troy thought, dropping his head back.  _I_ don't  _need this._

But...what to do? His mother knew the nature of his job—odd hours, whole days without breaks, weeks without a day off at the worst of times—and generally accepted that. Yet she must realize that he had not merely  _not answered_ , but  _hung up._  And god, there was no way she would let it alone. No way in heaven, on earth,  _or_  in hell. Really, he might as well count the minutes until she called back. Or... _I could just get on with it._

_"Get on with it." "Yes, get on with it!" "Get on with it!" "Oh, I_  am  _enjoying this scene."_   _"_ Get on with it _!"_  Troy snorted as the scene ran through his mind—unexpected and uncalled for—but even that levity quickly dissipated as his right hand and the mobile fall.

_Get on with it._  Drawing a deep breath and not permitting himself further delay, Troy slammed his thumb against the  _send_  button on his mobile's keypad, then brought the phone to his ear. Two rings sounded before an answer came. "Hello?"

"Hello, Mum," Troy said, tapping the fingers of his left hand on the top of his thigh.  _It's just Mum._

"Oh, it's you," she said, her voice raspier than ever after decades of sucking down a pack of fags a day.

"Look—"

"You going to hang up on me again?"

Troy turned around to the back wall of the foyer, then stepped closer to it. No one else stood near him, but he still tried to muffle the sound by holding the earpiece even closer. "I didn't have a choice."

"You  _had_  to?"

"I couldn't answer—"

"I don't believe a—"

"Forgot I was in a theater and hadn't turned the—"

Troy paused as his mother coughed, the sound hoarse and deep. "The theater?" she said when her breath returned. " _You_?"

"It's nothing, Mum," Troy said loudly. Rather than continue on, he took another breath. Every conversation with his mother demanded extraordinary patience. "What do you need?"

"Not going to ask how I am?"

"How are—"

"Or let me know how you are first?"

" _Fine_ , Mum."

"Wouldn't hurt you to call, occasionally."

His fingers drummed quicker against his upper leg, and his right hand was almost ready to join the rhythm against his mobile. "It's been mad out this way—"

"It only takes a few minutes—"

"I'm  _fine_." He whirled around again, flicking his eyes left to right to check to see that the foyer remained empty. "What did you want?"

"Well," his mother said, letting a few seconds of silence settle before going on, "you know the summer holiday is coming up."

"Yes—"

"The 30th."

" _Yes_ —"

"And you know the family is getting together for it."

"What—"

"Gavin, I  _sent_  it to you."

Hell, she was  _right_. Troy had forgotten all about it, the handwritten card filled with his mother's perfect script. It had arrived several days ago, requesting a response as quickly as possible, but he had set it atop a neat stack of other letters, intending to address it at a later date. The card had not been buried, but it had disappeared from his mind. "Is that it? That's all you needed?"

His mother huffed at the other end of the line. " _'Is that it?'_ "

Troy turned back to the wall of the foyer. Even if there was someone here whom he had not noticed, it didn't really matter for something like this. "Mum, I don't know—"

"It's just a question."

"I know—"

"Yes or no?" she snapped.

Troy began pacing along the wall, his eyes following his feet. "Mum—"

"Will you be there or no?"

"I don't know—"

"Gavin,  _please_." She stopped; he could almost see her hand tightening and the knuckles beginning to go white as they always did when she did not want to give voice to her anger. "We're already past the  _polite_  time. You got the invite more than a week ago—everyone's going to be there and I need to know."

"But I  _can't_  give you an answer."

Her knuckles might be cracking now. "Why not?"

"Because—"

"That's not an answer at all."

Troy turned around, retracing his steps at a faster clip. "You have to understand—"

"Understand what?"

Troy sighed, pressing his free hand against the wall. The joints in his own hand were beginning to go white. "Got a lot going on, and haven't had a lot of time to think." His fingertips were almost white, too. "We've been working like mad to get things in place for tomorrow night—haven't been able to stop and figure—"

"What's tomorrow night?" his mum asked.

Troy shook his head. "What?"

"What's so important, Gavin, that you're more worried about doing it than deciding to see your family?"

"I didn't mean—"

"Course you did."

God, sometimes he  _hated_  talking with his mother. "Mum—"

"What  _is_  it?"

Troy let out the breath he had been holding without realizing it. "I had to make sure I could—"

"Louder, Gavin."

"I had to make sure I could see Cully in her play," he repeated. "Don't think she'd ever forgive me if I didn't. Had to get everything done ahead of that and I didn't have time—"

"Cully?"

"It's opening night tomorrow—"

"Cully?" she said again, her own voice louder. "Unusual name, isn't it?"

"Um...yes." Troy had thought the same thing the first time  _he_  heard it, but hadn't bothered to consider it since. "It is."

"' _Her_ '?"

"Yes, Mum."

"What's her last name?"

"Mum—"

"Do I know her?"

Troy curled his fingers under his palm, forming his own fist against the wall. " _Mum—_ "

"I'm only asking."

"It's nothing—"

"And I'm not trying to be nosy—"

"You are—"

"I'm your mother," she said before clearing her throat.

"Mum—" Troy began, but his mother cut him off again.

"And Gavin, love, after you and Maureen divorced, you've never—"

"I can't hear you," he said, pulling the mobile a few inches from his ear.  _God, this_ is  _too much._  "Sorry—"

"Gavin—"

"I'll ring you later," he added, holding his phone even further away. "Can't hear a thing."

" _Gavin_."

"And I've got to go. Barnaby'll have my neck if I'm not back in—back at my desk." Well, neither version was  _really_  a lie, was it? Cully would probably throttle him for neglecting to silence the damn phone.

"Didn't you say you were at the theater?"

"Don't know what you mean," he said, dropping his gaze to his feet once more. "Sorry, Mum."

"Don't hang—"

"Talk to you later." Not waiting for her to say anything else, Troy hit the  _end_  button quicker than he ever remembered doing before.  _Of all the people...Best luck in the world,_  he thought, wrinkling his nose.  _Bloody luck._

There was no point in thinking about it any longer, Troy realized as he tucked his mobile back into his pocket. He knew what he  _wanted_  to do: ignore the invite and avoid the family. A melange of his mother's siblings might be present—his father's were another matter; they had rarely, if ever, attended such things since his parents' divorce—as well as a number of cousins toting along their children. And  _certainly_  Colin and Miranda.

Troy shuddered just thinking of them. On the rare occasions he saw them—Troy sometimes saw his cousin alone, but Miranda only ever visited when Colin was with her—Colin never passed up a chance to describe his career. No, he never passed up a chance to  _gloat_  about his career. Whether it was nattering on about the increasingly powerful computers he had access to or the various projects he was beginning or finishing, the man's job and future prospects never went unmentioned. And with a smug grin, Colin always asked Troy about his own job.  _"You still tracking down speeders and handing out ASBOs, Gav?"_

More than a few times, Troy had wanted to heed his father's advice before Colin spoke: take his revenge first with a good smack upside the head. But he never did, nor did he do so after his answers detailing some of Midsomer's more vicious crimes were met with condescension.  _"Well, I suppose that's good for you. Must keep your mind occupied."_  Colin's face could do with—

_Stop thinking about it!_  Troy reminded himself, turning away from the wall and taking the first steps toward the entrance to the theater.  _Might as well_ go _if that's what you want to do._  God, he needed to be back in the auditorium; at least the play would push Colin and Miranda and his mother out of his mind.

Slowly opening the door, Troy slipped through and immediately drew it closed with a sharp click. His vision swam again with the abrupt change from dim illumination to the harsh combination of stage lights and utter darkness. After his eyes settled, Troy had to bite his tongue to hold back his confusion. The set he last remembered had disappeared, replaced with a new backdrop and a fresh collection of props. And there was a new woman in addition to the familiar characters of Higgins, Pickering, and Cully—  _No, Eliza._

The new actress stared at Higgins, sitting straight with her grey hair pulled back atop her head. "'Very nicely put, indeed, Henry. No woman could resist such an invitation'," she said, and Troy saw Eliza gently nod her head.

"'You let her alone, mother'," Higgins shouted, rushing to and fro on the stage.  _Ah, Mrs. Higgins_ , Troy thought, leaning against the door, his legs aching again with the memory of the day's running around.  _Thought she showed up earlier._  "'Let her speak for herself. You will jolly soon see whether she has an idea that I haven't put into her head or a word that I haven't put into her mouth.'" Pickering, seated quite close to Eliza, shifted in his chair, his knees moving from one side to the other. "'I tell you I have created this thing out of the squashed cabbage leaves of Covent Garden; and now she pretends to play the fine lady with me.'"

"'Yes, dear'," Higgins' mother continued, "'but you'll sit down, won't you?'" Striding to the only empty chair, the professor sat quickly, slouching against the chair's back and folding his fingers around the end of each armrest.

"'Will you drop me altogether now that the experiment is over, Colonel Pickering?'" Eliza asked suddenly, moving one hand toward Pickering.

"'Oh don't'," the colonel said, covering her hand with one of his own. "'You mustn't think of it as an experiment. It shocks me, somehow.'"

Eliza shook her head as she looked down to the basket in her lap.  _What is_ that _?_  "'Oh, I'm only a squashed cabbage leaf.'"

Pickering slid forward to the edge of his chair. "'No.'"

"'—but I owe so much to you that I should be very unhappy if you forgot me'," Eliza continued, quieter than before.

"'It's very kind of you to say so, Miss Doolittle.'"

"'It's not because you paid for my dresses.'" She took her hand back, resting it atop that basket. "'I know you are generous to everybody with money. But it was from you that I learnt really nice manners; and that is what makes one a lady, isn't it?'" Mrs. Higgins, on Eliza's opposite side, nodded. "'You see it was so very difficult for me with the example of Professor Higgins always before me. I was brought up to be just like him, unable to control myself, and using bad language on the slightest provocation.'" Higgins now sat up properly, and even so far away, the rage was unmistakeable to Troy. "'And I should never have known that ladies and gentlemen didn't behave like that if you hadn't been there.'"

"'Well!'" Higgins yelled.

"'Oh, that's only his way, you know'," Pickering said; Troy would have said he was holding back a touch of guilt. "'He doesn't mean it.'"

_Like hell he doesn't,_  Troy thought, taking the first cautious and quiet footstep down the aisle.  _They always do._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It probably goes without saying, but the scene Troy is randomly remembering is from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.


End file.
